Agent Fatal III: The Lightening Strike
by DZHoneyBee
Summary: Rossi knows the deadliest games are affairs of the heart, and, after watching the collapse of Hotch and Reid, he decides it's time for a break. The team is on stand-down and the allure of the mountains of Colorado is calling their names. But what happens when Hotch and Reid are left stranded together in a blizzard? And what will Hotch do about Reid's new boyfriend, CIA agent Mark?
1. A Year From Now

**Hey guys! Welcome back to the Agent Fatal Series! This will be the third installment, named The Lightening Strike. First off, I am going to introduce a few new things to this part of the series. 1) Reid and Hotch are now referred to as Aaron and Spencer and 2) I will be posting what song I was listening to when I was writing a chapter. So I hope you enjoy the first chapter of AF III. It's long, I warn you, but I had to get the ground work covered and hopefully my shifting tenses was not too confusing for you all! The timeline is exactly a year after the start of Agent Fatal (fitting in somewhere in Season 7), Aaron and Spencer have been broken up since September when Emily returned and it is now December 2012 (a little future fic for those of you who enjoy them :)) **

**Also, I know this chapter is pretty somber but it will lighten up - I tried to fit in a little humor so hopefully you will all pick up on that!**

**I want to dedicate this story to Kee12345 who has been such a support in writing and developing this series. And to Special Agent Thomas Pacer who helped me with the technical FBI categorization terms and CIA info. Thank you Kee and love you Tom!**

**Song: _Heartbeats_ by Jose Gonzales**

**Agent Fatal III**

**The Lightening Strike**

* * *

The lightening was beautiful. It stole across the sky, illuminating the bands of honey and bougainvillea pink clouds that poured splashes of slate rain. Rolls of thunder beat the sky like a racing heartbeat and Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner stroked the rim of his tumbler of bourbon, the fiery liquid a comforting burn in his throat. The weight of the crystal in his hand was significant and if he were to hurl the glass through the window he stared out of, it would surely ignite the welcome of the storm into the living room of his apartment. Water would pool in pearl-grey plots, washing away the evidence of a night spent nursing three glasses of alcohol and admiring the oyster face of the clock above the bay window as it ticked through the hours of what had become Spencer's omnipresent night for dates.

Nights spent with his novel companion, a man who Aaron had grown accustomed to hearing at the threshold to his apartment on Tuesday and Saturday nights when he picked his former lover up with great politeness and dropped him off in the early light of dawn.

Spencer, who had suffered a _major depressive episode, _still lived with Aaron as he had sold his apartment and moved in with his superior and his son in the three months spent in idle contentment prior to Emily Prentiss's death and subsequent reappearance. And when Aaron had been reassigned to Pakistan for that aching month in summer, Spencer had been the acting father to Jack. Showering him with comfort and guidance, the genius had been the strength that was essential to both the Hotchner men's pain of separation. It had been the young agent who had tucked in his flaxen-haired boy at the end of the night, regaling him with stories of _Paddington Bear, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, _and Lynley Dodd's Hairy Maclary series.

Of course, that had all been before.

Before Emily's shadow darkened the doorway of the Behavioral Analysis Unit's conference room.

Aaron curled his hand tightly around the tumbler as his eyes lit a tired brown as more lightening whipped the black sky in cruel excitement. They had made love on that conference room table. Right there in the middle of it after Aaron had come close to being thrown from one of the government cars and into a narrow ditch on a case in late August. It might as well have been a graveyard, Spencer had recalled as he had gently pushed his then-lover against the glass door and sniffed back the tears of relief.

Not anymore.

Who knew what Spencer was doing these days? Not certainly pushing Aaron against a door. Not certainly kissing him and not certainly talking to him under any circumstances other than professional and when Jack was present. They had pushed their deceptive differences aside for the boy, who held tightly to Spencer's quasi-fatherly authority.

The irony that a man who hated him and yet still lived with him for his son's sake was not lost on Aaron. Bitterness had become a permanent guest in the small household, lingering in dark corners and watching with glee as chronic tension deepened the lines in each man's brow as the days and months passed by with no solutions as to how to handle their problems.

If Aaron was placid water, grey with no life, attempting to smooth things through, Spencer was volatile fire. Explosive and dangerous, he was benzene. There was no method to disarm him, only contain him until he merely bubbled and simmered with quiet rage. That had been the situation in October. And now Spencer was more like a shadow of his once lively self and Aaron suspected he tucked away his former luster, only to share it with his new man.

He couldn't blame the agent. Not at all.

Aaron had betrayed the trust of his team. Belittled the very men and women he considered family and in the sticky web of lies, Spencer had been caught in the crossfire as both a member of the team and a dirty little secret lover. It had been as simple as that. And when Spencer had fled Quantico Aaron hadn't thought twice to go after him in the naive hope that he would manage to convince the genius to trust him again and to believe that there was no other escape out of the situation. Of course JJ had been indicted of knowing the truth, which she _had_, and that had only sparked the fire.

Not one, but both of the people Spencer considered the closest thing to family had gone behind his back.

Aaron supposed he could not really condemn Spencer's hysterical behavior - a bloody mess for the Unit Chief to discover at his apartment after his lover had collided with the steel railing of the apartment stairwell in a tainted rage and ripped at the sensitive flesh of his forearm.

Aaron hadn't slept for four days after the incident.

His eyes had remained trained on the young man for hours, eyeing him in concern for any signals of a relapse into Dilaudid. Of course Spencer had slipped under his fatigued surveillance to seek solace in the arms of a certain blonde Pentagon employee and of course Aaron had experienced the beginnings of what was sure a myocardial infarction when he had assumed his lover had sought the solace of a dealer instead.

JJ's soothing voice over the answering machine informing him of Spencer's arrival to her house had not masked the grief in her tone. He knew just as well as she did that Spencer running bat between them did not do anything to ease the burden on their shoulders. It had only meant more tension and culpable glances at each other when the team gathered together for cases.

Aaron had watched from the doorway of their bedroom a few days after Emily's return as Spencer simply lay in bed, what was once their fortress of passion. His head was turned towards the window, cradling his wrapped arm close to his chest and regarding the setting September sun. Aaron walked in, setting the cup of green tea on the nightstand and perching on the edge of the bed.

"How are you feeling?" He had murmured somberly, reaching out to stroke back his former partner's hair.

Spencer had moved out of his reach and rolled over, their eyes never meeting in anything other than regret in one pair and hatred in the second. Aaron had sighed, the quivering of his outstretched hand palpable in the overwrought air of the bedroom.

"Spencer, please talk to me. Please, sweetheart."

Spencer had rolled back over, and their gazes caught together. The young man's eyes were blank, like two paper moons and the fear that seized in Aaron's heart at such an impassive accusation was greater than anything he had ever experienced thus far.

"I can't. I just...can't. I understand why. But I can't. Not yet."

"I'm sorry," Aaron's uttering was lame and they both felt it.

Spencer's face remained expressionless for a few moments before he turned over, drawing the covers close to his little frame.

"That's just not good enough anymore Hotch."

To call on the hands above would not have been enough either. No prayers to be said to save the wicked man from his sins.

For Aaron was certainly a sinner, Spencer neither a saint nor demon but a combination of both that begged to exorcise that terrible, terrible look from his eyes.

In their long time together, the Unit Chief had seen the range of expressions from beginning to end in his lithe lover's eyes: content, distraught, overwhelmed, lighthearted, heated, lustful... everything.

Never had he witnessed _nothing_. A nothingness that plagued two ponds of gold, shining no light and no dark.

Emily's death had brought them temporarily closer in a way. There was the expected increase of protection and communication between all members but then Aaron knew that being one profiler and friend down had been like venom spilling over all of them and they needed to bond together. After a while, however, they were falling apart at the seams and the proverbial chain of faith in each other had snapped like a cheap rubber band when Aaron and JJ stood in the conference room to reveal the horrific truth. No one trusted each other anymore, that much true.

Both agents were fading, becoming strangers to each other in both determination and disinclination. There had been a promise made, four hands bound together and two souls vowing to erase the fatal romance of their past.

Letters were burned, rings were returned, and their knowledge of each other was quietly ignored. Aaron pretended to not know about Spencer's gluten-free diet and Spencer returned the favor by flouting the shudders that wracked his superior's body at night in their shared bed as he silently sobbed with the powers above to make it all better again. To erase the mistake and return the two men to the passion they once knew. Aaron would never forget the night he gave all of himself to Spencer in Miami.

Never.

Spencer had whispered in the midnight silence as Aaron cried on, "I hope Foyet and you are cellmates when you finally go to hell."

Aaron had not registered the conversational tone in Spencer's voice until almost an hour later when the lucidity was given back to his eyes and his side of the bed was thoroughly soaked in tears.

Spencer slept peacefully through it all and Jack and he were gone when Aaron finally woke.

Two days later.

He had been roused only by his mind resurrecting itself after it had shut down from Spencer's murderous musing. He had found his body coiled around a mangled pillow like a panicked cobra, the sound of the front door closing a scream in the emptiness of the apartment. The brief steps along the carpet ignited a struggle to break free from the tangled sheets for Aaron to reach his gun, still encased in its safe on the bedside table.

_Spencer? _He had thought in slow hope.

"Clear!" He heard Morgan's voice echo and then suddenly there was another scream, another door opening, and Aaron was staring into the four eyes of four guns drawn at him.

"Oh my God," Emily breathed, her eyes rolling back and her body shuddering as she sunk down to the ground, dropping her gun on the floor. "We thought you were dead."

Aaron flinched because she had been there before. She had burst into his empty apartment with nothing more than a portentous stain of scarlet to greet her.

"Christ, Aaron." Dave had growled, and pressed his palm over Morgan's wrist to lower his gun. "You didn't answer either of your phones or your house phone."

"I was just asleep for a few hours," Aaron breathed.

Spencer's face had not been among the grief-stricken expressions of Emily, Morgan, Dave, and JJ.

Morgan's shoulders fell and he slumped against the wall with Emily, his dark eyes losing all alertness and instead clouding over like a black death. "Hotch, it is Monday," he had announced quietly. "We haven't heard from you for two days."

The air swiftly had departed from Aaron's body and he had felt himself suddenly falling, back against the humid sheets on his bed. A glance at his hands had told him they were raw and red from clutching the pillow and his pajamas were shriveled with wrinkles and his mouth hot and thick.

Aaron still was not sure why he was not fired at that minute but he was sure it was Dave's political wrangling with Strauss the past few days that had covered his unnerving absence.

"Where-" he had begun, but broke off, swallowing painfully. "Where's Spencer?"

Emily looked down, at a loss for words it had seemed. "He's back at the BAU. With Jack and Jess." Seeing his expression, she had continued. "They're fine, they're all right. They came there instead of here when Jess didn't hear from you...I guess she didn't want - she didn't _know_ if...well, the last time...Jack-"

"She did the right thing," Aaron had replied, the sterility of it all drawing a blank in his mind. He watched the red blink of his phone, like an eyeball in pain. He clutched the small Blackberry and his eyes had widened in horror at seeing a total of 342 voicemails, messages, and emails on the device.

"You want to explain?" Dave's voice had been without hostility and with more than the concern Aaron had anticipated. The veteran profiler holstered his gun and patted the edge of the bed for the remaining members to sit. They crowded around Aaron on the bed like ironic disciples, ready to listen to the wisdom their leader would pour out to them.

Yeah. _Sure_.

JJ still had said nothing and the rage had boiled in Aaron at the thought that she probably knew what had happened in the first place was nothing more than a hostile glower in her direction.

"He said...he said he _hoped_ Foyet-" Aaron's broken eyes flicked up to the ceiling in concentration. He would lose himself if he cried in front of his team. "That Foyet and I would be cellmates when I finally went to hell."

There was no noise in the agents, Aaron recalled, watching as a police car thundered past his apartment building under the sheet of rain that continued to pour as he downed another tumbler of bourbon. It stung and he relished its sear as he returned to the memory.

"He's mad," JJ had finally breathed, her tone sympathetic and hushed as though they were in a church and not in the bedroom of their once competent leader who had blocked out the world for two days. "He's acting out."

As if that was the justification for it all.

"Yeah, no shit." Morgan had shook his head. "He's like a bomb waiting to detonate at any moment."

"He needs time off," Emily had whispered in defense for she knew that she was who had really stuck the knife deep into Reid's back when she had returned from Paris. Aaron and JJ might have pushed it deeper but she had put it there in the first place, despite not having a choice.

"We all do," Morgan closed his eyes, idly tracing the carved wood of Aaron's four-poster bed frame.

Dave's eyes had flashed in registering what Morgan was saying as an idea slowly began to roll around in his head. He remained silent, however, as his four teammates continued to talk and to soothe one another.

_Let them lick their wounds_, he had thought, _and maybe I'll provide the cave for them to retreat._

The heartbeats of thunder returned Aaron to the present and he stroked the glass neck of the bottle of bourbon, studying the fingerprints he was making on the cap.

It was nearly empty.

_Christ_.

Jack was sleeping in the next room, his door open a crack for Aaron to keep a watchful eye over him, though the chief wondered how watchful an eye it would be considering the haze of fiery liquid he had fallen under. His mind sloshed as more memories from the past few months tempered through his thoughts, breaking and washing like the waves of the ocean.

Aaron wanted to go see the ocean. Hell, he wanted to drown in it, lose himself completely to the sucking soul of the water. He could just float out into the deep, eventually losing consciousness and power and fall inaudibly below into the sand among the dead who inevitably rested there too.

He would lay among the skeletal remains and sleep forever, running away from his problems and away from the eyes of the mean that penetrated his very self every time Spencer deigned to look in his direction.

Aaron slipped from his position in his armchair onto the floor and leant against it, running his fingers over the soft fibers of the carpet. Sobs balled in his throat but he swallowed them down, refusing to be reduced to tears again.

It was December again.

A full year to the day had passed since a sweet and innocent genius had materialized in the doorway of Aaron's hotel room in Pennsylvania.

Now snow fell again, a clean blanket to mask the past horrors of what the team had endured and Aaron wondered what Christmas would bring. Maybe Spencer would be with his new boyfriend, whatshisface..._Marvin_..._Malcom_...the Unit Chief exhaled as he battled to remember the name of the man he hated.

The bourbon had erased all chances of awareness.

_They hadn't lasted more than a few months_. Aaron thought bitterly, Spencer and him. He rolled the tumbler around on the floor and watched the last drips of alcohol spill out onto the carpet. He had been stupid to think cream carpeting was a smart idea anyways. Let him make his bed and lie in the damn thing.

_Mark_.

That was it.

Some hotshot with a business card. Spencer had erroneously left it tucked among a pile of mail on the hallway table one night evidently and Aaron had found it the following afternoon spent sorting through bills. The bourbon had dulled Aaron's sharp memory and he could not remember for the life of him what had been on the rest of the card. He had never met the character, only heard him in the doorway. Never laid eyes on the snake.

The agent felt as though he were barely holding onto his self control and he snarled at what a dull name Mark was. Nothing striking about it. He bet they had dull sex too.

Aaron giggled.

Dull sex with dull Mark.

A frisson of fear ran up his spine however when he glanced back at the open oyster face of the clock, noting the early hours of the morning that signaled Spencer probably would not be returning tonight.

"Daddy?"

Aaron's bolted upright at the sound of a voice tearing at the silence and he stumbled over his bare feet in a drunken cloud, dropping the empty bottle of bourbon where it smashed against the crystal tumbler and shattered glass over the carpet. Jagged pieces sparkled wickedly as another flicker of lightening blazed through the living room. The sprinkling snow that had begun to fall mingled with the frozen rain on the outside ledge of the window and it would have been glorious to admire in any other situation that was not this.

Jack stood in the doorway of his bedroom, holding his hands to his chest. His eyes were wide and a coffee-bean-brown that reflected the dominant genes of his father. Aaron was seeing the beginnings of Haley's gently sloping nose and curved lips on his son. Jack Hotchner would be handsome, a heartbreaker probably.

_Like his father. _

"Go back inside your room, buddy, there's broken glass. I'll be in there in a few minutes," Hotch worked to keep the waver of fear and slur of intoxication out of his voice as he crouched down to pick up the bottle pieces. Some kind of father he was. Drunk with his seven-year-old boy. The bottle had broken in large chunks thankfully as did the tumbler so there was to be no drawn-out canvassing of the area with crime scene tape and no need to bring out the surgical gloves to dispose of the smaller pieces. No need to bring in CSI for a rapid groom.

_Fuck was he married to his job_, Aaron cursed, dumping the bottle and glass in a few loops of paper towel before throwing the mess in the trashcan.

He gently padded back into Jack's bedroom to find his son back in his bed and clutching the stuffed green stegosaurus Spencer had given him a few weeks ago after returning from a trip to Seattle with Mathias or whatever the hell his name was. The man who Aaron hated.

Fuck Mathias and his fucking trips to Seattle.

Aaron knew his thoughts were irrational - it was he who had burned Spencer and destroyed their relationship - but if he were honest with himself, it had never occurred to him that Spencer might develop feelings for someone else in the future.

It was the narcissism in Aaron that he kept a secret from most at the FBI, a quality most commonly associated with the inhuman humans they hunted, and he while he realized he was possessive and jealous for a reason - Spencer was beautiful after all and of course he would attract someone else - he doubted that anyone else could love him the way Spencer had.

He was unlovable, indefinitely.

"I didn't mean to startle you, buddy. I'm sorry," Aaron murmured as he crouched down to rearrange the tangled comforter at the end of the bed. "Did the storm wake you?"

Jack nodded in silence.

Aaron smoothed a strand of his son's wayward golden hair behind his ear as he climbed into the bed. Both father and son shared a wistful exchange and Aaron tucked the comforter tighter around their bodies. A brief chill settled in the air and Jack slipped a sticky hand into the Unit Chief's calloused one.

He knew what Jack was silently asking.

_Why isn't Spence here? He's always here. _

It wasn't fair to Jack. None of it was. Aaron had wrecked another relationship for his son to suffer from. He had driven his mother away and inadvertently caused her murder. He had started a relationship with his _male_ subordinate, an episode unto itself in explaining to Jack why Daddy was kissing a man and not Mommy, and introduced him into Jack's life with the hope that Spencer would be a stable figure and then had driven him away too. The young profiler had stayed, however, and knew that Jack needed him in his life even if he hated his father. However, with the passing of time, Spencer's presence in the apartment had inevitably diminished slightly and the subsequent introduction of Mark (Aaron wasn't stupid, he knew when Spencer took him for the day or night that Mark would be there) was just another ingredient to poison the once placid mixture. It was like divorce, only not.

Mr. All-American FBI Agent living in his white-picket fence apartment. Twice divorced and a side of man sex to really ruffle the feathers.

So when Jack nestled down against Aaron's chest, and whispered, "I miss Spence," all Aaron could say was "yeah, buddy. _Me too_."

Jack looked up into his father's dark eyes, his expression one of disappointment and confusion. "Do I make you sad because I miss him?"

It was an incredible question for a seven year old to ask but Aaron knew with grieving difficulty that at a young age, Jack had seen and experienced far more than any normal child should have. His observations were thus typically more advanced than those of his peers.

"Buddy you're not making me sad at all," Hotch soothed, pressing a kiss to Jack's soft hair. "Why would you say that?"

"Whenever I ask where he is you look down." Jack replied, chewing on his lip. "You look sad, Daddy."

Aaron didn't answer right away and he wasn't sure how to answer. His son had just profiled him in a perfect minute. Jack Hotchner would grow up to do great things.

_Like his father. _

His heart clenched with a deep sadness, bestowing all that he had put his son through. His son, who didn't understand why his mother had been taken away, who accepted that he talked to her through a lit candle, and who loved and admired his father unconditionally even though Aaron knew he didn't deserve it, and who loved and accepted Spencer as his father's boyfriend.

He watched the streak of lightening burn behind the curtains of Jack's bedroom window and he breathed in the scent of innocence that permeated the pillow beneath his head. Spencer had the same smell of youth and virtue but Aaron was sure that if scent could be categorized by the FBI, his scent would read like the following:

**Federal Bureau Case File 100032B** / **The Aaron Hotchner** (homo sapiens, anima abrupta) / Kingdom: National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Behavioral Analysis Unit - 1 (Crimes against Adults) / Class: Middle / Rank: Advanced, Special Agent in Charge / Species: Sub - equivocal to - Monster

a). Scent 1: Bleu de Chanel cologne (notes of Citrus, Spice, Sandalwood) - equiv. - Mysterious, secretive, deceptive.

b). Scent 2: Tide laundry detergent - AKA - Clean son of a bitch.

c). Scent 3: Glen Garioch bourbon, 1958 - equiv. - Drunk, neglectful.

d). Scent 4: Gun oil - AKA - UNSUB. * **BOLO** out immediately.

Aaron exhaled thickly, his eyes slowly closing as he felt his son nestle into his side. He supposed Spencer's scent categorization would not read as similarly and as dark.

**Federal Bureau Case File 100032C / The Spencer Reid **(homo sapiens, ingeniosus) / Kingdom: National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, Behavioral Analysis Unit - 1 (Crimes against Adults), Starbucks Coffee House on Pennsylvania Avenue / Class: Middle / Rank: Advanced, Supervisory Special Agent / Species: Holier Than Thou - equivocal to - Angel

a). Scent 1: Creed Green Irish Tweed (notes of French Verbena, Florentine Iris, Violet leaves) - equiv. - Quirky little minx, classic, _Fougère_.

b). Scent 2: Sugary coffee - AKA - Sex on two legs.

c). Scent 3: Leather messenger bag - AKA - Private bastard.

d) Scent 4: Gun oil - equiv. - **F**idelity, **B**ravery, **I**ntegrity.

e). Scent 5: Whatshisface, Markus, Malvolio - equiv - Rape victim * **BOLO** for Markus out immediately.

"Buddy?" Aaron adjusted his cramped body and continued to stroke Jack's hair. "I'm not sad and you don't make me sad. I just hope you're not sad, honey."

"I'm sad Spence isn't around anymore," Jack rubbed at his nose.

"He will be though." It was a vow Aaron was making to himself though he knew he shouldn't be making promises with the devil anymore.

Nine stab wounds, the last time he had done it, though he was sure Spencer wouldn't hack him to death.

Then again maybe not.

"I hope so." Jack mumbled, his voice turning over into a sleepy slur. Aaron drew the covers up around them, not bothering to change out of the dress shirt and trousers he had arrived home in hours earlier.

"Do you want to talk to Mom?"

Jack looked up all of a sudden. "Will it make you sad?"

Aaron smiled lightly, touched by his son's protectiveness. "No, buddy. I want to." He reached for the small votive he kept by Jack's bed and let his son hold it, a ritual they had developed in the days following Haley's death. They spoke to her in silence and with words, the troubles of the day shared with the heavens and it calmed both Hotchner men to know what someone up there was listening, Aaron was sure.

"Hi, Mom." Aaron prompted, gently caressing Jack's temple.

"Hi, Mommy." Jack echoed quietly, his brow furrowed in concentration. "I miss you. I don't want Daddy to be sad no more and I don't want Spencer to be sad."

They waited as moments of silence passed through.

"Thank you, Mommy." Aaron finished the prayer. "And keep Jack safe."

"And Dad."

"Dad too," Aaron nodded, a twinkle beginning to form in his tired eyes and the cloud of intoxication beginning to lift. "Alright, time to settle down, sport. It's almost morning. Do you want me to stay with you?"

Jack shook his head and smiled. "You're taking up my bed."

"Oh, my apologies Baby Bear," Aaron quirked a grin and kissed his son goodnight before returning to the living room.

The thunder continued to drive night into morning and the agent stayed awake, admiring the glitter of electricity that crackled like fire as the sun began to rise hours later. He hadn't slept but he knew he wouldn't have been able to, not without Spencer home. His mind had become a razor blade, thoughts turning bad in an instant when his imagination got the better of him. Though his thoughts were not all that far fetched given his profession and what his team had witnessed and dug through - the deepest and darkest evils of humanity had been documented, sealed, and sorted through in his years as an FBI employee.

He sat in the armchair once more, eyes narrowed at the mist of the dawn. He missed Spencer. He missed him and hated him for hating him. The first months of absolute fury had dissolved into weeks of hurt and then everything had eventually collapsed into nothing more than wistful blankness and the two men floated around each other on eggshells, afraid to fight for anymore more than a passing nod of recognition at home and a professional relationship at work.

And that was during a good week. Spencer would be volatile at best sometimes, like an errant child Aaron knew he could not scold.

And then there were the passive aggressive signs of Spencer's resentment every now and again that were dropped in Aaron's lap like grenades. In the second month of Emily's return, the initial tidal wave of rage was in mid-pass when Aaron came across the first sign. Richmond PD had enlisted his help in grooming over a few cold cases and cataloguing them. The cases had been four cardboard boxes deep and it had taken Aaron two weeks to sort through them all, arranging them chronologically by day, month and then year in order to determine more developed profiles of the killers and their patterns of attack.

He had left for an hour after completing his project to go collect Jack from school and when he returned to quickly browse over the boxes before sending them back to Richmond, he had thundered a series of profanities that would have sent any Jack Sparrows packing for the Bible Belt of Tennessee.

Spencer, who of course had made a swift escape from the apartment before Aaron returned, had rearranged the cases alphabetically and destroyed Aaron's meticulous work with no chance of redemption. When Spencer eventually turned up at work, a pink glow of smugness tinting his cheeks, Aaron had confronted him in his office.

Spencer's response had been defiant, his eyes narrowing as he spat "I wonder what that's like. Having everything you worked for erased in a matter of hours."

The agent was becoming sharp witted, his tongue a blade to cut Aaron to shreds and the elder man knew he deserved it. Hell, he deserved to have his car keyed and his team taken away from him.

He learned, however, to keep work locked up away from Spencer but the grenades so to speak kept coming. They weren't obvious...Spencer was far too sophisticated for childish pranks...but would be sure to ruin Aaron's day or make its mark. A stranger's Audi R8 car keys attached to Spencer's keyring... Disposing of their condoms and lube in their shared bathroom...

Dull voices outside of the front door sprang Aaron from his position and he silently debated diving under the coffee table to hide in his own home. Instead he swallowed, casting a longing look at the second bottle of bourbon that winked at him from the kitchen island.

Could he?

_Yes_.

He swallowed a quick cap, followed by a second and third before the creak of the door opening sent him back to the armchair where, like a child caught by his parents awake at night, he pretended to be asleep. So much for Aaron Hotchner, lethal prosecutor and feared chief of the BAU. This was Aaron Hotchner, drunk at age nine.

"... A great time, babe." Shit. It was that Macbeth creature or whatever the fuck his name was.

_Babe? _Aaron rolled his eyes. What a common and unoriginal insult. He peered around the edge of the chair, straining to see the shadows that dared darken his hallway. He didn't want MacDonald in his apartment. He didn't want the monster near his Spencer.

He recalled his scent categorizing. Scent 5. Rape victim. Hotch snorted as the alcohol began to take effect. He was being ridiculous. He had nothing to fear. He rolled back his shoulders and stood suddenly, startling the figures that had not noticed his presence.

"Aaron," Spencer noted, surprise in his tone. He had surely thought returning at six in the morning would have saved him a painful encounter. Even after a year, the waves of anger still roiled through his body at inconsistent intervals though now they had mostly settled and the two men were polite to each other at best.

The genius eyed his former lover, profiling every inch and noting the crisp navy trousers and clean white shirt. The blood red tie was a signature as were the sterling silver cufflinks. His gun was holstered at his trim hip, the symbol of his officer status displayed as blatant as a sign to his new boyfriend. He might as well have dumped a bottle of testosterone all over himself.

Aaron flicked his eyes to Macbeth, finding himself staring into two luminous moons of yellow for eyes, framed by thick dark lashes. The man bore a striking resemblance to Christian Bale circa _The Dark Knight._ He was unremarkable looking and at the same time Aaron couldn't keep his eyes off of him. Handsome, that was for sure, and the Unit Chief cemented that Spencer definitely had a type.

Tall. Dark. Handsome. Older. Alpha Male.

A straight nose complimented a pointed chin and pursed lips, the face a tan caramel and the hair and eyes a soft espresso. The hair, Aaron noticed with jealous scrutiny, was swept softly to the side and seemed to stay there unlike Aaron's, who usually used a stiff gel to keep his sweep in place. His brow was drawn in what was neither a scowl nor a frown but a series of deep creases caused by the erosion of chronic pressure and tension.

"Mark. Graff." The stranger smiled warmly, holding out his hand. Aaron met the grip crushingly, wishing he would spin the man into the ground and put a bullet through his brain.

He didn't look like he had dull sex. He looked like he had wild sex.

Mark Graff.

_Why did that name sound familiar? _

Aaron eyed him subtly once more as Mark had turned to Spencer to hand him back his jacket and scarf. His profiler instincts had rotated into a driving pace and he quickly evaluated what was in front of him.

The hairs of the back of Aaron's neck suddenly flared up as he realized the weight of the name presented to him.

Graff.

As in Graff Diamonds. As in the heir to one of the wealthiest jewelry empires in the world. Aaron recalled reading an article attached to the monthly Bureau newsletter on an idle Wednesday a few years back on a Mark Graff. It had been a profile on "One to Watch in Law Enforcement." Parents killed in 9/11. Political advisor to the California governor turned CIA agent. CIA agent who had single-handedly collapsed the core of an illustrious Middle East banker's plan to detonate a secondary series of bombs in London after a few had exploded on buses and in tube stations on 7/7.

Fuck.

_Fuck_.

And here Aaron had hoped the squirrel worked for something hopelessly boring like an insurance company...or a grocery store as a bag boy.

Oh no. The fucker had to go and leave his comfortable world of luxury to serve justice to the men who had killed his parents and then go save the world. He was more of a legend at the FBI than Rossi was - and the kid didn't even work there. Mueller had been trying to pilfer him from the CIA for years with no luck. _Little shithead_, Aaron balled his fists as the pure liquid fire of jealously was doused over his head. That explained the new Swiss watch on Reid's wrist and the Audi R8 whose engine Aaron could hear purring downstairs. He knew the various sounds of foreign cars.

CIA? The guy was probably an assassin.

"Camp Peary," Aaron nodded solemnly, feeling very much like a father appraising a daughter's date though Mark couldn't have been that much younger than the agent himself. Maybe 42. 44. Or maybe he had some sort of Benjamin Button fungus and was really 14. Oh boy would that blow Spencer's rocket.

Spencer continued to study the two men from the corner of the hallway, biting his nails. Both of them stood uncannily similar. Shoulders drawn back, mouths in firm lines, the slight lean of their calves both causing them to appear taller than they were. The genius wondered briefly if both of them intended to start a brawl or pee all around Spencer to mark their territory.

An Alpha CIA agent versus an Alpha FBI agent in an act of reckless passion for a skinny, odd-looking genius. It was the stuff of legends.

But Mark still kept the open expression on his chiseled face as though he were leisurely secure in his position in Spencer's life and it reminded the young profiler of a Labrador puppy. Which would in turn make Hotch a guarded German Sheppard, unwilling to share his chew toy.

Mark nodded, suddenly looking uncomfortable, but that was the CIA, Aaron thought. Paranoid. Untrustworthy. Unwilling to talk about anything except the weather.

The Unit Chief wondered why the hell the intelligence agency didn't hire him. The FBI was too virtuous for him after the stunt he pulled in June.

"Nice to meet you Aaron." Mark smiled a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'll see you later, babe?" He turned his attention to Spencer, who had been hovering between the two men like a nervous hummingbird, studying the interaction of his new lover and former lover with the dedication of a scientist.

Aaron was subtle enough to know to dismiss himself. He nodded threateningly at Mark and then all but fled like a wreck down the hallway, blocking out the whispers that followed his retreat.

"I'll be back from Colorado in a few days," he could hear Mark promise and the sound of he and Spencer demurely kissing goodnight...good _morning_ really...was too much to bear.

"You'll call?" Spencer whispered quietly and Aaron imagined him looking at the yellow eyes with his own gold eyes, filled with uncertainty.

"I'll call."

Aaron backed himself into his bedroom, eventually showering and scrubbing his teeth viciously to rid his gums of the bourbon stink. He heard the front door close but did not feel the comfort of having Mark gone from his apartment. Having Mark gone meant Spencer would be turning in for a few hours of sleep, despite the early morning time. It meant Aaron would also have to consider the allure of a quick slumber.

It also meant the two men sharing the bed where they had been spending the past months ignoring each other and ignoring the memories of love and lust that lay embedded in the pillows and blankets.

Aaron sighed as he undressed.

Another lightening strike whipped the sky in wicked scorn.

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**Well, I hoped you liked the beginning of The Lightening Strike! :) Please review! Let me know what you think about the start of all of this! **


	2. Fade Into You

**Hey everyone! Thank you for the fantastic response on the first chapter! I'm glad you are all liking it :) And thank you to everyone who has read/favorited/alerted/reviewed it so far! I was so excited about the responses that I just couldn't wait to write the second chapter...so voila!**

**Song: _What If This Storm Ends?_ - Snow Patrol (I always recommend listening to these songs before reading the chapters because they sort of set the tone if that makes sense).**

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Clothed in colors of heat and closeness, the dismal heavens appeared hung with an impenetrable curtain of mist and raven. Spencer Reid looked on from his kingdom of sorts as buzzards screamed and beat the storm with heavy wings as they sought the Earth swirling below them. In common prudence, the regular creatures of the dawn had retreated at once into shelters and yet in the arms of the lightening, these birds squabbled with delight. Glorious and naked trees waved their sticks and tassels at the genius who stood at the living room window and held tightly to Aaron's empty bottle of bourbon.

Mark had left.

Aaron was in bed doing who knows what though that thought should not have crossed his mind. They had been an exquisite waste of time, their relationship. Upset and imbalanced from the very start it had been destined to fail in the very horrific way it eventually did. Mark was better. He was.

The terrific violence of the storm and the accompanying mesonoxian vapor pacified Spencer's racing heart and yet made it seize in unwelcomed concern.

Aaron's drinking.

In the unusual heat of the fall and fury he had lost himself to after Emily's return, Spencer had maliciously welcomed the abuse his fatal partner endured by the bottle. Such deceptive actions merited the man stewing in the ashes he had smoked out of each member of the team. And yet with great imprudence, the younger agent had believed that with time and healing they would both move away, Spencer into a new relationship and Aaron into sobriety.

How ironically wrong for a genius of thirty years of age who currently thumbed the ridges of the bottle cap, stroking Aaron's smudged fingerprints and wishing, not surprisingly, to be stroking Aaron's bare skin.

Spencer's gaze lifted back to the heavens. For several minutes the air appeared perfectly without movement, the scene too beautiful to mar. No flash broke through the curtains but a flickering light was visible, darting to and fro behind them. By degrees, the thunder rolled onward, nearer and nearer, until the obsidian clouds burst asunder and cataracts of light flooded from behind it. It was an infinite cycle, this storm. It raged like a child of contempt, beating iron firsts of fury at the snow that had begun to weaken the storm's tight jaws.

From that moment there was no interval, no pause, the lightening did not flash, there were no roars of thunder, but the heavens blazed and bellowed around the apartment until stupor took the place of Spencer's terror and he stood for hours, utterly perplexed by what he was seeing.

The bottle remained in his caress, a talisman for his visual interlude.

Torrents of watery gust arose and seemed to bruise the building by their violence and thick ivory dusk like elephant tusks meeting it in sharp embraces. The fierce fires of heaven only burned the brighter for the falling flood and Spencer leant his forehead against the pane of glass and surveyed the wind that was left at last like the lord of the skies. From high up on the sixth floor, worlds of clouds thundered together in hostile contact and the little peoples of Connecticut Avenue, a soft straggling mass of raincoats and umbrellas, whirred like ants set loose.

It was December. Aaron was drinking still and in that minute Spencer found himself to be quite unlovable. He saw this man in the retired storm, a man with his twin selves, one so loving and sentimental it demanded a child to be cut from similar cloth. The other, a match found in steel and glorious darkness that sucked souls in the name of a higher power ruled by the iron fists of Robert Mueller.

He saw this man and he too was entirely unlovable and yet in some indescribable shadow they had loved each other in a few moments. The world had flown by with nothing to lose in the spring of Virginia until September had arrived in a heap of rain clouds and stones and the stately maize that polished Quantico grounds like small marigold heads. And with those clouds and stones and yellow grains, Aaron and Spencer's short content abode came to a grinding halt.

Spencer had never known the extent of his full fury except in hindsight as he visited the painful memories of the monster he became. Trapped under Aaron's controlling nervousness, and without an apartment to seek refuge in during his medical leave, the young profiler had done little but observe nature's organic strip from the bed he once made love to his superior in. His arm, wrapped in gauze, was a constant sign of Emily's death and resurrection and though Spencer was not religious, he often contemplated the connections in his female friend's return, absolving Aaron's sins, and the swaddled wound that led both persons like a north star through the grey of the past few months.

September and October had been a perpetual night for the genius. The sun had set and not risen for considerable time and his spitting fury was the only torch of hope in knowing that if he was suffering, Aaron had to suffer simultaneously. And yet as he had acknowledged his change from grief and deliberate scorn, he had recalled that his only escape from the labyrinth of becoming as bad as his lover was to forgive and to move on, if not out completely.

Out completely was no longer an option, however. Not with pleading blue eyes that followed his every stalk and step, belonging to Jack Hotchner, the closest thing he had ever had to a son in his lifetime. He recognized in the seven-year-old the parallels of their respective childhoods and while hating Aaron had been easy and hard on the best of days he could not let himself depart from Jack's life the way his father had, consequently leaving him with a capricious mother.

Jack Hotchner would not become a witness to his father's slow descent into intoxicated hell and if Spencer were honest with himself, he never wished ill on Aaron. He had spat things on impulse but never with meaning and his calculated bombs of progression were unintentional until it was too late. The pain in Aaron's espresso-colored eyes at seeing Mark's second set of car keys on his keychain had been the drizzle of rain in Spencer's growing storm of apprehension.

To hold onto pieces of an amazing dream was one of the most beautiful and yet most tormenting ability the mind held. Aaron's apartment was no longer a home and no longer a friend. Every wall, piece of furniture, and picture and painting was a fragment of the dream Spencer clung to and wished to dispose of, inexorably unable to ever really let go because absolute finality meant giving himself to the world unknown.

He was scared shitless.

That was it.

He hated Aaron for doing what he did but the idea that he might not be able to relive their happier encounters if he ever truly moved out haunted him. The thought of going back out into the world alone was unwelcome and too painful to contemplate.

The growls of thunder returned Spencer to his present self, a self too fatigued to fight another for anything. He had become passive in his interpersonal relations that in meeting another vacant soul like Mark, with yellow spheres for eyes, had been a seductive escape. He had looked at this stranger who screamed all the encumbers of a single and accepting man and Spencer had let himself be possessed and become possessed with the hope of turning Mark into the man he wished Aaron had been.

Mark Graff held Aaron Hotchner's aesthetic skeleton and yet held none of the darkness and deception that Spencer had attuned himself to tolerating all these years. What this creature, this Diamond Man, held was an obtuse grasp on the world that he wanted to gift to his new lover. The cavalier luxury that was showered upon him had at one time made Spencer feel wanted and loved but as the months swept by and his anger had faded, he found that he too had faded into something.

Aaron had used to call him radiant.

The radiance was dead.

He was a shell with nothing to offer but tactless information and with no love for himself there was no love to give his new man. Mark's observable wealth and zeal for the relationship unnerved him because in Spencer's analytical mind, he realized at the mark of mid-November, that he was replaceable like Mark's former lovers. The man found in him little to call special or unique and instead treated him like a child. He didn't mean to of course, Spencer had noted in observation, but his personality had been groomed for care and for nurturing which the genius had needed at the time of the relationship. That had been in the beginning sludge of November weather.

The storms had begun.

It was still December though Spencer longed for another March, another June.

He no longer felt the need to be smothered by a man who could smother others if disposed of. No, he still laid his head at night in the snarls of Irish linen and sought solace in the tangled thoughts of a man he truly, _truly_ had considered insufferable at points and still wanted to hate.

His rearranging of Aaron's files was a childish plea for attention and when it had been received, the same hiss in remembering what his Unit Chief did to him had flared like the petals of a rose and his placid mentality was lost again.

A constant battle he could no longer control and his body and soul were drained of attempting to bridle it into some semblance of politeness. Instead, it reared its mean head at inopportune times and in seeking the advice of his narcotics mentor, the director had suggested writing as therapy.

So he wrote where he could not speak. Writing, and reading, became a manner of exercise in empathy and to pass his medical leave. In life, Spencer had encountered the complete scope of humanity and the realm of psychosis and in turn had operated to them separate trajectories, each person spinning into a different direction. Though the secret pleasure he found in writing and reading fiction was that it placed him in the uncommon position of having no trajectory. It was a peaceful relief. The genius could allow himself to stand aside, motives abandoned for the duration of the story he wrote or read. The characters he created had the trajectories and he could simply observe. It stirred compassion that, in reality, was so often lost and obscured by his personal motives to crush Aaron into oblivion.

This had been December 1st. Eleven days ago.

The only thing worse than being blind was having sight and no vision.

Spencer had a twisted vision for how he wanted things to play out. He wanted Mark to want him like Aaron had wanted him once upon a time. He wanted the deleterious affects of his past lover's drinking to cease immediately and he wanted the house he lived in to become a home again where he could quietly depart without being missed.

He felt uncomfortable in the opulent globe that was Mark Graff. Witnessing Aaron's crest-fallen expression only hours earlier had made him want to rip off his new watch and hurl it through the window and into the rain. Reckless was the moment. And of course he had come down from his flitting hummingbird high and then having to endure Mark and Aaron's testosterone-fueled size-up had been too much to handle. The head of the wave he had been lapping up over the months had peaked at the two agents' meeting and Aaron's swimming eyes were more than enough evidence that Spencer might have pushed it too far.

Fuck.

_Fuck_.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

_What the hell am I going to do? _

He cast his eyes downwards at the city below his feet again but the wild force of the water had all but passed. Leaving the earth in a crushed state was Spencer to Aaron and Aaron to Spencer. They were so destructively right for each other but the genius wouldn't let himself hear the sound of losing something he never found.

_We had never really been happy_, he thought, pressing his palm against the windowpane and fogging the glass with his breath. The glass recovered and so did Spencer. The moment of weakness would pass. Mark and he were good together. It was an uphill battle to lose his past from Aaron but every day was a new climb and a new chance to try. During the gust, during their romantic storm, it would have been impossible for each man to keep their feet on the ground. The allure of deception was too much to ignore for Aaron and the allure of yellow eyes and welcoming arms was too much for Spencer. Dismally pale they were together and not much better apart.

No wins and no losses.

Spencer fingered where his commitment ring used to be on his hand and drew a ragged nail across the winter-bitten skin, slicing it and watching the unpromising launch of blood bead on the knuckle. The pain was okay. The pain he could handle. The scar on his forearm from the banister he could not and suddenly the thought of December was okay because it signaled long sleeves and one of Mark's inviting cashmere sweaters.

He liked his watch. Really, he did.

Moments of weakness were to be expected. An uphill battle. The climb. He liked his watch. He did.

He would.

Eventually.

It was eight in the morning when the considerable terror of the storm had gone dormant and Spencer paced through the living room and into the bedroom he still shared with Aaron. They had tried the couch but both men were too tall for it to be a comfortable fit and Aaron wouldn't have let the apparently invalid genius sleep on furniture not designed for dreaming and the young agent was too much of a nervous little nail-biter to strike Aaron from his own bed.

And so they would sleep, sometimes in a rage and sometimes in quiet with only grunts of recognition or panicked wondering to fulfill their time. Nightmares plagued both men and had become welcome guests because at least it meant they were sleeping. Fear in bed passed the time quicker than staring at a ceiling because after a while, the crown molding could only behave so politely before it seemed to snarl back with boredom.

The bedroom was bathed like silvery ribbons cloaking the winter light. It was eerie but not. Spencer crept along the carpet and deposited Aaron's bourbon bottle in the cabinet of his bedside table, sliding it into the company of the nine others he had held onto. If anything they would make for fantastic weapons in the case Spencer could not reach his gun safe in the time of an emergency.

It would be awkward as hell to holster though.

So maybe not. Spencer was awkward enough as it was without having to lance Jim Beam at an UnSub.

As he undressed by the side of the bed he briefly recalled the debate he had had with Morgan and Rossi over moving out of Aaron's apartment and finding a new one of his own.

The Van Ness one hadn't been exceptionally awful. Not really. Spencer had a fantastic imagination. If he shut his eyes, it would have been his old Georgetown apartment. And he had been demonstrating so in the presence of his realtor and two male teammates, waxing philosophical on the beauty of the skylight when Morgan broke his reverence.

"All that's missing is the tuberculosis." He had growled, eyeing the realtor with all the suspicion he typically reserved for clown encounters. "This is a shit hole. Either you live with one of us for the time being, you move in with your Batman boy, or you stay put with the Decepticon."

Spencer had of course scoffed at Morgan's bite at Mark and looked at Rossi for backup. The veteran profiler merely turned his gaze elsewhere and folded his arms, evidently still entranced in whatever cloud of thought he had been stuck in for the past few days since Aaron had woken from his two-day slump. An idea was mulling somewhere for the elder man and Spencer had yet to figure out what it was yet he discarded the flippant response and left the shit hole. Being there for Jack would come first before Mark and before finding his own place.

_Eventually_, he would tell himself. _Eventually I'll be able to let this apartment go. My home. My memories of happiness. _

Spencer dressed, smarting from the memory, and crawled into bed. He favored the very edge of the crisp sage sheets to avoid precarious contact with Aaron which would inevitably result in more turbulence for the former couple. He had decided on the first night in September that he was not fond of his side of the bed, having never actually slept on it before and having grown accustomed to being smothered in his superior's arms on _his_ side. His own edge was rather cold and unfamiliar.

The rumpled duvet was already pushed towards his side because Spencer hated the cold and having the air conditioning on in winter and Aaron became like a small furnace in his sleep and had often woken in a cold sweat in the past, no matter the season or time of year. It was another unspoken symbol of how well they knew each other, another symbol politely ignored on Spencer's part. On the night of the 4th of October, a day that Aaron would forever and spitefully mark as the day Spencer cheerfully disassembled his Richmond PD cold case files, the young profiler had awoke in the dead of night to find that the air conditioning had been turned to the approximate temperature of 42 degrees. Spencer had crept over to the unit to shut the device off when he had heard a growled "don't even think about it," emanate from the bed. He had in turn silently wished for his ex to find his body blue with frostbite and regret come morning. It was not like they could nuzzle together for warmth anymore.

Spencer sighed as he sat up in bed in the present, surreptitiously glancing over at his former boyfriend. Aaron lay diagonally across the mattress on his back, a stern expression masking his drunken stupor even while dead to the world, and soft, manly snores escaped in puffs from his alcohol-tainted lips. Only Aaron Hotchner could black out and still intimidate the fuck out of someone. His trim but toned body was clothed cautiously in only a white T-shirt and faded pajama pants. Spencer shimmied further under the covers, feeling melancholy in an instant at the realization that on any other night, four months ago, he would have been sadly overdressed for the nighttime occasion in his striped shirt and trousers.

They would have made love. They would have kissed with fervor, Aaron shedding Spencer's clothing and Spencer filling the air with obscene noises and filling his mouth with Aaron's fingers. They would have made love like they did at the Globe & Laurel while the Chief Medical Examiner of Arlington, Virginia and one of the founding fathers of the BAU sat waiting for the men at their table, playing idly with their napkins.

He accidently knocked his foot with Aaron's and breathed a quick apology, seizing his leg back as though he had stung himself.

Aaron merely grunted in response and rolled over onto his front, unconsciously bringing Spencer's pillow out from under the genius' head and flopping it onto the floor on the opposite side of the room.

Spencer sighed and sat back up, cautiously leaning over his superior in any attempt to retrieve his pillow though he realized it was futile when he saw Aaron's white-knuckled grip on it. He wasn't about to fight the snoring drunk beside him for a firm puff of feathers and risk having his arm taken off.

He exhaled heavily and leaned back down onto the bare mattress, pulling all the blankets up and over his head so he lay in total, suffocating darkness.

The roiling return of the storm was but a dull moan that thrashed and clawed at the bedroom windows, the throes of chilly tears falling in sheets from the sky and it was a small relief that at least they were safe. Safe together and unsafe together.

Perhaps tomorrow he would have the courage to face what he had ignited. He could justify his actions. Courage didn't always roar into appearance. Sometimes courage was the quiet voice at the end of the day saying _He still loves you and you still love him_.

And then like a strike of lightening, Spencer's cell phone began to chime with early morning glee, brightening with David Rossi's name.

_What the hell could he want this early?_

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**Please review!**


	3. Two Can Keep A Secret

**Hey everyone! Thank you to all those who have been reading/reviewing/alerting/favoriting so far! Someone requested that I elaborate more on Spencer's writing so I decided to insert this chapter in! It's a little bit of a backspace from the last chapter - meant to be captured right before Spencer walks into the bedroom with the new bottle of bourbon to stash away. Anyways, enjoy!**

**Song: **_**Any Other Name - **_**Thomas Newman**

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Amidst the creases and snarls of his Irish linen sheets, Aaron lay in the wake of loyal bereavement and allowed his eyes to trace the edges of the bedroom furniture, stultified from the time of many memories and wear. He had, of course, in the few minutes expended upon wrestling with his mental and moral skirmish, worked himself into a bitter and tight longing and profiled every standing item that came under his scorching gawk.

The footboard had trust issues, the armchair was currently experiencing the beginnings of PTSD (evidently exasperated by what Aaron believed to be Mark and Spencer's purported bump in the night) and the frilly lamp in the corner was into bondage.

Aaron sighed and he rubbed at his jaw that was dark with a menacingly unkempt beard. As he lay on his back, his eyes caught the curve of Spencer's side of the bed and there he found himself again, in the pitches of barely clinging onto his self-control lest he might drown in his own salty tears again and again until his genius counterpart returned from whatever he was doing outside in the living room.

Probably apologizing to Mark about forcibly cohabiting with an intoxicated and bad-tempered hermit.

Unwisely and only a slight bit premeditated, Aaron rolled himself like a burrito over to Spencer's nightstand where he knew the agent kept the empty bottles of alcohol he had taken to collecting since mid-September. Noiselessly he slid open the first drawer, expecting to up his count of nine bottles of bourbon but instead was greeted with a cream sachet of pages, their slightly wrinkled faces swollen with purple ink.

He picked the sheets of paper up and slid off the grosgrain ribbon that bound them together.

The last page fell from Aaron's shaky grasp and, picking it up, he squinted in the argent light to read the eccentric cursive. He felt his throat constrict as he followed the lines of what was obviously Spencer's clandestine writings, an exact ignition of every sentiment the man had experienced in the past few months.

Indignation appeared to be a common thread that held the works in a collection and Aaron felt the tears threaten and ripple behind his tense eyes.

_October 14th 2011_

_...In complete and total bliss my gift to you was my heart as a whole._

_Together we shaped it._

_In one day you killed it. _

_Since then I have watched a thousand dawns cut the horizon in solace and I cannot seem to rid my mind of you. _

_We will never see what we could have been. _

_You had held my hand like you would never let it go. _

_You had talked about the future with a sincerity I will not forget._

_You knew that all I had to offer you was my heart and yet that did not seem to be enough. _

_You were the sea in which I was floating and I lost myself to you._

_You were a lover to my face and a liar in the dark._

_Please keep me in your memory and hopefully we will both grow from this._

_I hoped not to grow apart but I wish our journey didn't have to end this way._

_Because I'm still in love with the person who helped me walk it. _

_I have realized in time that the people you love become ghosts inside of you and like this, you keep them alive. _

_Perhaps some people are meant to fall in love with each other but are not meant to be together. _

_Perhaps I will never know because we will never see what we could have been. _

_As far as possible, each soul has to be content alone before plunging into love, because one will never know when the other will move out of that love. _

_I find it to be the greatest paradox._

_Souls need each other and they need to not need each other. _

_I suppose you moved out of that love a while ago, Aaron._

_I also suppose I was the last to find that out._

_November 1st 2011_

_Time is swift, it races by;_

_Opportunities are born and die._

_Still you wait and will not try,_

_A bird with wings who dares not rise and fly._

_November 17th 2011_

_...Knowing you is hard, Aaron._

_Knowing that I always came second to the job is hard._

_Knowing that I was never good enough or above deception is hard._

_Knowing that our time spent together in light and lies is hard._

_Knowing that I could not be granted as the exception to any of your rules is hard._

_Knowing you is damn hard, Aaron._

_Hating you is hard._

_Loving you...is not. _

Aaron shuddered as he studied, in thrilling concentration, the last line. Salt tracked over his fatigued face and swelled about his quivering lower lip and all of a sudden it was too much. He placed the sachet back into the nightstand and found himself unable to fight the disarming tears anymore.

And so he cried again.

It was a ritual, these nightly tears, encumbered by the veracity that Aaron had brought this on himself though he would forever dissent and claim he had little choice over the situation and over Emily's safety. Yet that never stopped the crying and it was as though years and years of smothered emotions had finally broken free and were no longer able to contain themselves even in the most jocular of times.

He was the man who had been grey for years coming back in glorious Technicolor.

It was a release he craved day by day though Spencer's scoffs still echoed in the Unit Chief's ears at times. Some things were worth believing in, whether they were true or not and Aaron's only comfort in the swell of his sentiments was that he was grieving the loss of himself and the man he used to be.

Something that Spencer had artfully detailed in his private works though Aaron would not let himself to lose control of that. Those words were written with only one audience in mind and if they had been spat at the elder agent then that would have denoted a different response.

And now all that Aaron could do now was wish he had never read any of it. Thoughts of those letters would surely haunt him more and more and his mind was alive with the possibilities of Spencer's last written words. The Unit Chief knew that thoughts were harmless unless they were believed in and that was the crest of where he found fault. It was not the thoughts but the attachments to the those thoughts that caused suffering and both men had endured the anguish of a thousand heavy years in only two short lifetimes. Aaron knew that attaching emotions to thoughts meant believing without question and his beliefs were thoughts that he had been attached to for many months now.

Imagining the beginnings of his and Spencer's reunion was just that: imagination. And his imagination could be crueler than any murderous captor.

It was he who had the hands soaked with the blood of the broken.

So despite the falling of his skeleton shields and the mental warnings, he stroked the slightly rumpled material of Spencer's pillows under his hands and closed his eyes.

"Please love me again." He whispered.

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	4. The Wicked Game

**Thank you to everyone who has been following/reviewing/alerting/reading this story!**

**Song: Day Dreams (MyKill Remix) - Mati Matilda / Cracks (Flux Pavillion Remix) [feat. Belle Humble] - Freestylers**

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The morning stars paled slowly, swirling free of their nighttime cloaks, and the night waned in the gray awakening that heralded the light. Still in the dying darkness, the pearly dew of the dawning clung to each tree limb and windowsill, growing stiff with the snow that had begun to line the limestone ridges of Spencer and Aaron's apartment building.

Spencer's regal glower was fixed on his phone on the bedside table that hummed alive with Rossi's number. Beside him, husky snores confirmed Aaron had not stirred at the sound of the ringing and Spencer found himself still _sans_ pillow. He averted his eyes to watch the bare branches kiss in broken excitement and he rolled his eyes after a few moments and picked up the phone just as it was about to roll over to voicemail.

"Please tell me this is a national emergency," he half-whispered, mildly peeking at his watch that glittered from the burnt sun. He appreciated the gesture and the timepiece itself. It just...wasn't him. It would have looked more appropriate on any one of his male coworkers' wrists - sleek, solid, smoked carbon face, _powerful_ - but not his. He favored old things - odd as it was - but this just _wasn't_ old. The watch wasn't him. And Mark should have known that.

Aaron certainly would have.

"No, but that's a thought that's going to fester for a while." Came Rossi's cool, partially amused voice.

"I'm sorry to be rude, Rossi, but why exactly are you calling me?"

"How's Batman?"

"His name is _Mark_." Spencer's eyes narrowed in the dark, seething at the team's latest crack about his boyfriend - something he found to be quite humorless.

"Yes, yes, of course. Mark. How's Mark?"

"He's fine. You're evading the question. Why are you calling me?"

"I have a proposition for you, Reid." Straight to the point, Rossi wasn't one to loiter around his plan. He had already executed the majority of his game but playing Spencer and Aaron was going to be his most strenuous battle.

"What?" Spencer sighed, tensing at the father-son discussion he was anticipating. Beside him, Aaron had kicked the covers to the end of the bed and Spencer resented pulling them back up so he wouldn't freeze over and have to be thawed via hairdryer by the time actual morning appeared.

By now the airy golden vapor rose from the ground and dried honeysuckles stirred on the windowsill, darting from their crannied nests. Fiery crimson clouds had taken the vague shapes of scorpions, briefly reminding Spencer of Aaron's Zodiac sign.

"We're on stand-by after the 17th next week. I was planning on spending it skiing at my cabin in Vail and I'd like for you to join me."

"How very _Brokeback Mountain_ of you," Spencer replied dryly.

"Reid, please. Spare me. I'm dubious of your knowledge about luxury ski resorts and I'm asking you in sincerity."

"I hope Mark will appreciate my dead corpse because there's no way I'm going."

"Batman's into necrophilia? My condolences to Robin."

"You know you're disturbing my sleep right now."

"No I'm not. You were awake and thinking about Aaron."

"What are you from Statefarm?"

"You know I checked the weather report this morning but they failed to mention a shit storm heading my way."

Spencer scoffed and rolled his eyes.

"Rossi did you call just to remind me of my precarious living situation? It's snoring right next to me if you'd like to speak to it."

"Aaron is not an _it_. Like I said, I want you to come with me." After a small pause, Rossi's voice softened and the veteran agent exhaled slowly. " Emily's return...Aaron and JJ's lying...it hit all of us badly but it _destroyed_ you and we have been witnesses to it these past few months. You're angry, you're impatient, you're frustrated and it's understandable. But you need a break. You're miserable here, Spencer."

"I'm not miserable. I'm very happy with Mark."

"I didn't ask you if you were happy with Mark. I said you were miserable."

Spencer ground his teeth together. Admitting out loud his self-assurance of his current relationship was his first fault and it did not take a profiler to throw his error back in his face.

"So you're bullying me into spending Christmas with you?"

"I wouldn't call it bullying," Rossi snorted. "It's...more of a tempered proposal."

"_Tempered proposal_ is a poorly veiled euphemism for an ageist order."

"Spencer," Rossi could feel his prior adrenaline rush flagging slightly. He had not foreseen the Spencer side of his battle as being particularly difficult though he realized his naivety in assuming Spencer was the same man he had been all those years ago when the two agents had been introduced for the first time.

It was quite remarkable the change the two men had travelled through in their short time together, Rossi noted. Spencer, who previously had been described as little more than peculiar in some situations, had been the most dynamic of the Hotchner-Reid power duo: gone was the staggering timidity and quick submissiveness to any other agent in the Bureau, along with the skeletal frame and wild hair that had some semblance to an overgrown mullet. Hell, the kid had wielded a gun like an out-of-control umbrella and had kept Aaron's backup weapon his pocket like it was a damn comb.

_This_ Spencer was a confident, witty, and sharp man who, against all odds, had unfolded from an ugly duckling into a...well, Rossi could only think of him as a black swan these past few months. Gone was the long hair and slight figure to be replaced by a tousled, modern cut and broad shoulders and a deliciously slender torso. He bit back at his superiors, exercised more aggression in the field, calmly refuted Senators in the wake of Ian Doyle's capture, and he loved, seduced, and dismantled the most heroic and currently appalling master of the universe: Agent Aaron Hotchner.

Agent Aaron Hotchner who had undergone an entirely dissimilar alteration: the man had become human. Rossi recalled their initial meeting on a dismal morning in Seattle in 1998 where a newly married and ambitious agent seemed to be catching the stars by the bucketful. Aaron was bright, driven, focused and intelligent. But, like a double-edged knife, he was beautiful and deadly. He was a secretive and protective man who would travel to the ends of the earth and move Heaven and Hell simultaneously if it meant not becoming his father's son, achieving ultimate perfection, and sacrificing everything for their mutual greedy taker, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

It was not narcissism per say, but a strong desire to prove himself and fight for justice. Rossi would hardly be surprised and would be damn well proud if he ever returned to the Bureau for a quick spin around the joint in his older age and found Aaron to be the new Director at Headquarters in a few years.

But through a series of unfortunate events, Aaron had crumbled under the pressure and newness of his relationship with Spencer and become absolutely, punishingly, _devastatingly_ broken. His hold on his team would never be questioned given his tenure success as a Unit Chief at the BAU, but Rossi could never ignore the slightly hazy glare in the man's eyes during morning conferences that did not come from simple sleepiness.

Alcoholism was an evil aphrodisiac but that didn't mean Aaron had to grieve for it.

"Spencer," Rossi repeated, hoping the man hadn't fallen back asleep from the few minutes of silence lapsing over their phone call, "If there's one thing I have learned in all my marriages it's that true love stories never have endings."

"I don't want to talk about Aaron," Reid breathed wearily, and Rossi knew he had gotten through to the younger agent only slightly.

"Loneliness is processed in the same area of the brain as physical pain."

There was silence before Spencer closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headboard, glancing down at Aaron who had rolled towards him and was now breathing lightly into Spencer's side.

Finally after what seemed to be hours, giving into curiosity and good old temptation, Spencer very carefully placed the tips of his fingers over Aaron's messy hair and slowly but surely stroked them through from tip to end, untangling the dark locks.

It was achingly familiar and at once Spencer removed his hand, afraid that if he allowed himself to continue the ministrations that it would all come flooding back.

The wistful glances. The denial. The feelings. The nightmares. Everything.

"I'm not in pain anymore," the young agent eventually said despite his defeated tone. "I'm lonely. But not in pain."

"Both of you were made to love. Both of you were made to love _each other_, Spencer."

"Some men just want to watch the world burn. I guess I fell in love with one of those men."

"Spencer...Aaron doesn't want to watch the world burn anymore than he wants you to be unhappy. He's killing himself trying to make you forgive him."

"I _did_ forgive him," Spencer suddenly snapped, tightening his grip on his iPhone. "But that doesn't mean I have to be in a relationship with him."

"No, no, you're right," Rossi granted, spiraling back to his original plan. "So, thoughts on Vail?"

"I'll look stupid on skis."

"No you won't. You'll look...dapper."

"Euphemism."

"Crabby aren't we, Dr. Icabodia?"

"Don't use pop culture references around me at such a God-forbidden hour."

"Cantankerous."

"So it will be just us flying to Colorado?" Spencer wrinkled his nose at the idea but his shoulders lowered at the thought of escaping the hell he found himself to be presently trapped in. Maybe a few days back out west would help him clear his mind.

_Maybe Mark will still be there_, Spencer wondered idly.

"Just us flying."

The young genius took one last longing glance at Aaron's handsome, comatose body that had somehow curled around his as he sat up against the headboard. He cursed what little discipline he had and let the fight leave his body, relaxing into the possessive and desperate grasp of his former lover. He would he would regret it in the morning but in that very moment, he knew it would make dreaming just a little bit easier. He never slept that well in Mark's arms. Not as well as he had when he was wrapped tightly in two muscled, scarred arms that smelled so distressingly nostalgic and had once radiated protection. "Alright, I'm in."

"Excellent."

With that, Rossi hung up and reached for his notepad at the breakfast bar. Slowly and with great snugness, he crossed _Spencer_ off the list of names he had written down and then dialed Aaron's number.

_Spencer never asked about anyone else _driving_ to Colorado_, he thought, smiling.

* * *

**Okay! Quick poll!**

**If the BAU agents were cars, which ones would they be?**

**Aaron Hotchner:**

**a) GMC Acadia**

**b) Chevy Tahoe**

**c) Acura MDX**

**Jennifer Jareau:**

**a) Honda CR-V**

**b) Ford Explorer**

**Emily Prentiss:**

**a) Mini Cooper Convertable**

**b) BMW 1-Series Coupe**

**David Rossi:**

**a) Audi A5 Coupe**

**b) Jaguar XJ**

**c) Mercedes E-Class**

**Leave your answers and I'll be factoring them into the next two chapters! So that might be something fun to look forward to.**

**In the mean time, please review!**


	5. Out Of The Lion's Den

**Sorry for the long update. Heavy doses of life and an absent boyfriend has been taking up my time.**

**NB: For the reviewer who questioned why Spencer was still staying with Aaron: I never meant to offend you by having Spencer stay in the apartment and not move out. No, I agree with you that he is not a housewife and yes he has his own money and friends to stay with but he reason he stayed is because he **_**wanted**_** to. He didn't want to leave Jack because of a) Aaron's drinking, b) he wasn't ready to fully give up the memories of their sort-of family being happy together, c) he didn't want to walk out on Jack like his father. I tried to mention these reasons throughout the past few chapters and I apologize if I did not do it adequately enough. **

**Additionally, concerning the cars - I have been re-watching **_**Criminal Minds**_** episodes to see what the agents drive. Hotch does drive a GMC (you can spot the symbol on the trunk of his car in Season 7 when he asks Beth out on a date at the end of the episode- yes, I notice those kinds of details). I tweeted with the cast and managed to get ahold of AJ Cook and asked her what car she thought JJ would drive - she answered with a Honda. And for Prentiss, I just remembered she drives a Jaguar (when she checks her car to see if Ian Doyle has planted someone under or in it), so I will change that. As for Rossi, since Joe M. the actor who plays him drives an Audi A5, I figured I would choose something similar. So to answer your statement, the cars are not completely out of reality for the agents and I hope not to offend. Thank you!**

**Sorry for the long-winded explanations and I hope you enjoy this chapter and find it appropriately funny :)**

**Song: _The Lonely World_ - Jeremy Silver (as seen at the end of the episode with Reid's 30th birthday) **

* * *

With the last deposits of a scarlet sky hanging low under the burn of mid-morning, Aaron found himself to be caught in an impenetrable slumber, dreaming about broomsticks. It was a welcome modification to his usual nightmares and he clung to the heat that exuded itself from under his cheek. He nuzzled against the silk hem of something and when he turned his head to the right, he felt balmy flesh, so tender and recognizable that in the unconscious haze of dozing, he made the decision to attempt to extend his dream of hunting Strauss and the golden snitch for as long as possible.

An electronic clamor drilled at the back of his subconscious suddenly and he lifted his hand to flop at where the alarm clock should have been on his bedside table. Yet all he managed to do was smash his knuckles against the dense headboard, jarring himself from his cavernous sleep. He rose from his position and squinted at where the sound was emanating from. Feverous pounding bore at the front of his skull as soon as he found his balance and his tongue felt syrupy in his mouth.

_Shit was he ever hung-over. _

Blinking, he looked back at where he was and his cheeks turned pink with discomfiture as he realized he was lying horizontally across the bed...with his head resting on Spencer's flat and very naked belly.

The bottom of the young agent's pajama shirt had ridden up slightly and Aaron felt the indent of the fabric across his temple. A sinful sliver of Spencer's exposed skin winked up at the Unit Chief as if to say _Yes, I am soft. Please touch me more_.

The dusting of dark hair disappearing into the band of the still-sleeping genius' pajama pants certainly did _not_ make it any easier to get Aaron to worm his way back over to his side and away from his sleeping ex.

He glowered at the man, sulking as he realized that if it had been five months ago, waking up in that particular position would have been quite a treat for both agents.

Aaron would have lapped at the smooth skin under his lips, tugged at the fine russet hairs, and palmed Spencer's dormant erection until the younger man was filling the bedroom with drowsy purrs of contentment, eventually waking and..._and_...

Another burst of _Back in the U.S.S.R_ and Aaron broke from his inapt reverie, reaching for his personal cell and answering it, already aware of who was calling.

"Legend has it you can't sleep because you're in someone else's dream." Rossi greeted, a semblance of a calm smile on his face.

"I hope you choke on your frittata," Aaron answered in a surly tone, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

He felt the bed shift under his body and he twisted to regard Spencer stretching in his sleep, letting out a sleepy coo, wiggling his toes back to life, and promptly rolling onto his front so he lay facedown on the mattress.

"I thought you were a morning person," Rossi chose to ignore the growl in his friend's voice and absently-mindedly drew a Fibonacci swirl on the corner of his notepad. His many years of friendship with the Unit Chief had allowed the veteran agent to deduct that Aaron _was_ in fact a morning person, though that fact was relative. He was perpetually fatigued no matter the time of day and it simply came with the turbulent roles of agent, single parent, and now the single-agent-living-with-ex-boyfriend-parent, which was perhaps the most tiresome of the three.

"How are you, Aaron?" Rossi's voice softened and concern painted his tone.

Aaron sat up, carding a hand through his hair. It stood on end like the many thick tentacles of a sea anemone spiraling underwater and the man let a hoarse yawn escape his lips as he mulled over his friend's peculiar timing to inquire about his wellbeing.

"I'm okay," Aaron eventually answered, glancing around for his watch. He noticed for the first time upon slumber that Spencer was on what he considered _his_ side of the bed and wondered how the hell he had missed that.

That been their solitary incompatibility as short-circuiting lovers: both men had a strong, even possessive, preference for the side of the bed farthest from the door - as if the extra few feet of mattress would make all the difference in the time it would take to grab a gun for defense. The elder agent picked up his watch to squint at the numbers and it occurred to him that both his Glock 17 and 26 were plainly on his bedside table while Spencer's Smith & Wesson was on his.

Odds were that if an intruder were to enter, Spencer and Aaron would both wake in blind panic and shoot each other.

"Aaron," came Rossi's gentle admonishment and there was a gaping pause in conversation as the previously sleeping agent rested his head against the headboard, his gaze sweeping over the corners of the window.

Frozen water hugged the glass, glittering like crystal in the wakening day. Exposed from the rain, the sun scorched the concrete jungle of downtown Virginia and shone in Aaron's eyes, a ball of coral as bright as Spencer's eyes could turn when he tipped his head to the unreachable heavens.

"It's a battle," Aaron eventually answered, a sigh trailing after the words. He strained to remember the last time someone had _really_ asked him how he was after Emily had surfaced from mortality. No memories came and depression blossomed in the man's chest at the impression that revulsion would overpower his squad - his friends first and foremost - so much so that they no longer cared about how he felt dealing with the emotional turmoil of such trickery. Spencer certainly hadn't broadcasted any caring thoughts though Aaron now had the slightest pocket of hope in his heart after reading the agent's buried admissions.

_Hating you is hard. Loving you...is not. _

"Memories are like sunshine," Rossi's voice was without malice and the man had long ago absolved his friend's deceit because he knew too well from experience that the job demanded far more than physical hours. It demanded emotional hours too, ones that were not so effortless in dismissing. "They warm you up, they leave a pleasant glow. But you can't hold them."

Several seconds of nothing went by before he spoke again.

"I understand that it hurts. It hurts like hell. But you need to think about how Spencer's dealing with it. How he dealt with it. You took us all in for evaluations and you watched him grieve for someone-"

"I didn't have a _choice_. You don't think it hurt me too?" Aaron suddenly hissed, his defenses rising into familiar position. He was tempted to hang up.

"Aaron," Rossi spoke calmly, "I'm not placing blame on you or Spencer. I remember telling you that I was more married to this job than I was to any of my ex-wives. I understand your actions and there aren't days that go by that I don't sit and watch with regret that you two couldn't work things out."

"I spoiled it. I feel like my heart was dropped in a pot of boiling tears," Aaron said dryly and an impish grin worked itself over his lips at Rossi's outright laugh. It felt good to smile again, even if it was at the expense of himself and his relationship.

"Christ, it feels good to laugh," the other agent chuckled, breathing out in relief. "I think you two will find each other again."

"I don't know anymore, Dave. I really...just don't know. He's angry and frustrated and I can't blame him. He was right when he said I was a waste of time."

"If you love someone, you set them free. If they come back, they're yours. "

"And if he doesn't come back?"

"He will. A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are." Rossi frowned, searching for his words. "We can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soul mate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. They're the person who makes life...come to life."

Silence settled over the phone line and Aaron dared not to breathe as the words sunk around him, clinging to his bones like the markings of a leopard.

"You have a soul mate, Aaron. And I don't usually saying things like this so you take my word for what it is. You both just need time. With time comes healing and both of you haven't had time to properly grieve the end of the relationship - you never did from day one - and you both just threw yourself into...other things. You tried to salvage what little you had left of yourselves and I'm not trying to profile you Aaron but please just listen to what I'm saying."

"I'm listening," Aaron's voice was a minute hush that carried in the air.

A movement caught the Unit Chief's vision and he turned to watch his former lover, his apparent soul mate, unconsciously reach his arm behind his back to scrape at an itch he couldn't reach.

Without much thought to it, Aaron cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear and reached over to hike the back of Spencer's shirt up. He raked his nails over the creamy skin as he had done so many times before and the young genius settled down, arching into the satisfying sting and purring ever so slightly.

Aaron froze his ministrations at the sound, comprehending the degree of intimacy and exactly what he was doing and almost dropped his cell phone. Yet when Spencer stirred again, he reached with ample hesitation to continue to draw lazy circles with his fingertips over his bedmate's slim waist. It seemed so natural and so forbidden at the same time, the sensation catching and tingling on Aaron's arm and he feared that if he drew away, he might never capture this same moment again. It was like he was stealing a part of Spencer's innocence but then again, he had already done that a year ago.

He'd crushed it with the tip of his gleaming dress shoe and a kiss of his firm lips.

Aaron swallowed and he exhaled to calm the race of his heart. "You didn't really call to give me advice about my failed relationship."

"No. But I'm concerned about you."

The insinuation was heavy: _I'm concerned about your drinking._

Aaron sighed again. With absolute honesty, he was frustrated with himself about it too. He missed the man he used to be several months ago before bourbon had become a naturalized release for his multiple quandaries. It was almost like his soul had escaped at some point before May and he had become a whole new self - someone he rather hated. And of course he had battled the urge to accept this new reality - he was a driven single parent who was at the mercy of his job, who had fucked up a romance, who was drowning in intoxication and who losing touch with his team and, more importantly, his son.

Aaron shook his head as though his ears were flooded with water. It was as though he didn't fit or belong anymore, his desire for justice and for the job no longer being satisfied. He was in an invariable clash with misery and he was tired of clashing. He was tired of constantly craving Spencer and craving his soul back. He missed the spitting adrenaline of knowing he put away another horror and prevented another family from being crushed and he missed the way his son used to look at him with admiration pouring from his beautiful blue eyes.

These days, Jack gave little more than a _Where's Spencer_? look and the subsequent _Don't feed me bullshit because I already ate my breakfast_ look, which was a dead-on expression of his father's.

He mourned for everything he had before Ian Doyle had appeared on the scene and it was there that he decided he wouldn't surrender. He would not become his father's son and he would not become his brother. He would not lose himself in the downward spiral and he would accept that for now Spencer and him were over. He would take the time to grieve and he would heal accordingly.

The simplicity of it was flawless: his past self was in the wind for him to catch.

And Aaron Hotchner was a hunter who never missed a Goddamn shot in his life.

He couldn't fathom sleep at this point and his mind retained the lucidity it enjoyed before alcohol usually seduced it into dormancy.

"Thank you, Dave." Aaron knew that his friend would understand the gravity of his gratitude. "I'm glad you called."

"Me too, Aaron. Me too. And I have a proposition for you. Something I want to run by you. And that doesn't include you not shaving off your beard - you should, you're beginning to look like the illegitimate child of my second mother-in-law and Santa Claus."

"_Okay_," The Unit Chief frowned, feeling the adrenaline just minutely fade from his veins and he let his hand rest on the great warmth of Spencer's lower back. The young agent appeared comforted by the touch and Aaron remembered how soundly his former lover had slept in his arms for the months they spent in happiness together. After Emily's return, Spencer had drifted in and out of fits of insomnia just like the elder agent had and it seemed that tonight, for whatever the reason, was the night their respective demons rested too.

He felt the course hair around his jaw and the underside of his neck, debating whether to shave it all off again.

"How would you and Jack like to spend Christmas skiing in Vail? Now I know what you're thinking, Aaron, but Jack has never been skiing and after all that we've talked about, I think it would be good for you two to spend time together."

Aaron was sure that if his head hadn't already been resting against the headboard, he would have whipped it back in surprise and given himself a concussion.

"It would be a nice change from Virginia and a chance to clear your head."

"And leave Spencer here alone on Christmas?" Aaron said flatly, his drive flagging. He was not adamantly opposed to the idea and being able to spend time with Jack uninterrupted was appealing though it was in his nature to fend off emotional aid from friends.

"Spencer has Mark."

_Confidence terminated._

"Whom I met tonight. We might have a case though."

"Now you know as well as I do that AL starts on the 17th and McConnell's team is on stand-by to take our place."

"It's expensive." Aaron tried, absently flicking his glance back over to his comatose bedmate.

"Aaron, you have ties more expensive than a first-class plane ticket so quit your bitching and hand over your American Express."

"Do I have a choice in any of this?" Aaron smirked. He enjoyed the tightening of his facial muscles for it was such a pleasant change from his usual grimace. In recent, his eyes had become uncommonly dark as he stalked around the house or the BAU and his mouth was set as if it had never known how to smile. "So Spencer is not included in this arrangement?"

"Geniuses don't always play well with others," Rossi answered cryptically, knowing that eventually if his plan paid off, he would suffer the wrath of both agents once they found themselves stuck in the mountains together. Hopefully the wrath would simmer and the men would lose themselves to each other.

"Tell me about it," Aaron smiled grimly. Spencer wasn't playing well with anyone these days, except for his CIA magnate of a boyfriend. But he took comfort in the small fact that Spencer was with him at the moment when he could have been with Mark. Hell, he could have moved in with the man and he didn't.

He stayed because he wasn't going to walk out of Jack's life and confuse the little boy with the departure of another parent figure.

"So what is Aaron Hotchner's big game? Will he say yes or will he say no to Vail? Will he take on Graff?" Rossi ho-hummed, drumming his fingers along the edge of the table he sat at. He fiddled with his cold frittata.

"Aaron Hotchner has no big game as of now," Aaron yawned again, stretching his throat muscles because Lord knew he wasn't exercising them the way he wanted to anymore. A loud, raspy scream had become a sufficient replacement for a blowjob.

_Time. You both need time, Aaron_. _You both need to grieve the end of the relationship._

"Aaron, if Michael Phelps challenged you to beat him in the next Olympics, you would take him on."

"But I'm not a swimmer," Aaron arched an eyebrow, his face now lit with mid-morning shadows and his jaw as dark as ever with unshaven hair. Spencer rolled towards him, drawing up all the covers around his frame and Aaron instinctively relaxed.

"That's not my point. My point is that you don't let anyone challenge you at anything. It's in your nature. You would take on Phelps and _win_."

Rossi listened to Aaron's silence before continuing.

"So why the hell are you letting some pollen-eyed dipstick dandy stomp all over your territory? Why aren't you winning? You can grieve for the relationship while still defending your man."

"But I hurt him...I hurt all of you." Aaron's brow furrowed in confusion and he was embarrassed to admit he was lost in what his friend was getting at.

"And Kristen Stewart cheated on her wild-haired kook of a boyfriend. Shit happens. People make choices, some of them good, some of them...not so good. We of all people should know that given the specific nature of our job."

"So...I'm Michael Phelps and Spencer...is Kristen Stewart?" Aaron asked incredulously. He flexed his toes and then swung himself away from the warmth of the bed and padded into the quiet hallway.

"No. Reid is Reid and you're Aaron. And you're going to go to Vail with your son, have a good time together and play Apples to Apples until the cows come home and by then hopefully you and Spencer will be calm enough to work things out."

_If not sooner and if you don't bury each other outback in the snow_, Rossi thought.

The phone was silent again before Rossi added: "but if you're looking for Phelps, his coach will be on the third floor with Agents Pacer and Kapowski from CID today, routing security measures for the London games."

"You've been holding out on me, Dave." And for the first time in about four months, Aaron smiled a real, honest-to-God smile: his mouth forming its signature flat, amused line that brought out two distinct creases in his cheeks.

"I'm Italian. I have a flair of the dramatics I suppose." The formerly retired agent quipped.

"So I assume you're joining Jack and I on this impromptu trip? I think Jack would be over the moon to have his Uncle Dave around for Christmas."

"Uncle Dave? Christ does that make me feel old."

"We'll be flying?" Aaron suddenly shuddered as a memory struck him.

The last time he had flown with his son and Spencer, he had been watching Jack wave goodbye to him from the suitcase conveyer belt. Jack had had the time of his life on the short-lived ride and Aaron had almost smothered Spencer in the middle of baggage claim with the man's purple scarf for letting his son out of his sight for a nanosecond.

"I'd rather drive with Jack and meet you there," Aaron concluded and Rossi suppressed the satisfied look crossing his features as his friend played exactly into his plan. He knew Aaron would hate to fly again, especially over Christmas, and he would never forget how both he and Spencer had returned from their family trip a few months ago, ruffled, lazy and smug as hell. Rossi could only deduce that the make-up sex after their Jack debacle had been spectacular.

"That's fine by me. So, you were expecting Mark to be a bespectacled, anorexic weirdo and instead you got Bruce Wayne?"

"I wasn't expecting who I saw in my hallway." Moments passed again in awkward silence before Aaron leaned against the doorway frame and cast wistful stares at the falling snow. Thunder flapped in the shadows of the day and Aaron knew it was going to be another week of storms again. "I was polite and I'll leave it at that."

"Well done then."

"For what?"

"For not frothing at the mouth upon seeing them together."

Aaron scowled. "I have never frothed before."

* * *

Upon hanging up with Rossi, Aaron surfed silently through the apartment, checking up on his sleeping son, brushing his teeth, and disposing of every bottle of alcohol he had before taking out all the trash. Relief was sentient at once and, on impulse, he gathered his running shoes, slipped on a pair of faded blue sweatpants and a fleece, and slid out of the door for a brisk run.

His feet pounded the icy Virginian pavement and he ran like he had never run before. Breath like blowing glass that vanished as soon as it appeared, muscles contracting and straining, Aaron moved gracefully like a panther through the deserted streets. With each step he felt his shoulders shed the weight of his haunting past, growing lighter and more elegant as time passed. He wasn't sure how long he had run for but his heart thundered, his thighs ached, and his whole body felt like a machine revved for war.

He felt alive again and _damn_ was it good.

When he returned, Jack was still asleep and Aaron headed straight for the refrigerator to grab the Brown Betty apple pie Jess had baked for the household. As he was retrieving a plate from the cabinet he heard a polite cough from the arched entrance and he whipped around.

Spencer stood in the space, still dressed in his pajamas with his dark hair wet from a shower. He lifted his hand in an awkward wave and there was a ghost of a smile on his face. It gave Aaron hope and he suddenly felt self-conscious in his sweaty clothes, despite the fact that Spencer had always had a thing for him returning un-showered from a workout or from a physically demanding case.

There was a moment of silence as the two agents regarded each other and Aaron cleared his throat, smiling back.

"Is that Betty Boop pie?" Spencer slid closer, apparently friendlier than he had been in weeks. Perhaps he had also had a change of heart at some point during the night.

"Betty Brown," Aaron laughed, forgetting to compose his features as he had trained himself to do since September. His heart thudded in his chest and he slid a plate towards his former lover and added a fork.

Spencer tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and for a moment it was like nothing had ever happened between them. It was a flicker of electricity that passed between their locked gazes but it fizzled when Spencer broke the stare and sat down.

Aaron watched him closely and for a second the comparison of Spencer and the sun flitted in his mind. He was the grim cloud that covered the genius from being seen and Aaron was immediately determined to make Spencer _his_ again. He didn't care how long it took. The cloud would protect his sun.

_Time_, Aaron thought to himself in great hopefulness. _We just need time._

* * *

**Please review! It helps me update faster!**


	6. Savages

**"Sorry for the huge delay. A whole lot of life has been coming at me, along with moving into my apartment and the start of school.** **Enjoy this chapter please!**

**Song: Beyond This Moment - Patrick O'Hearn/The Funeral - Band of Horses (as seen in _Revelations_ when Reid starts his drug addiction)**

* * *

A savage tempest thundered soundlessly and Relief Supervisor Mark Graff's Central Intelligence Agency office was a quiet play of watching rain slip from the peculiar marine sky and two lovers standing at the window, almost boyishly, and touching intimately and with the expressions of strangers. Snow had smothered the clouds in pewter and platinum, leaving them lurking like wartime submarines in unsettled waters. An imperfect moon was beginning to surface behind the raging ice storm, bruising the late afternoon.

Spencer sighed as his eyes drew over the gnarled reaches of the winter vines outside Mark's plated window, all of them holding up their hands and offering the best they had in such a time of bitter cold.

"Don't go," Mark whispered, stroking his lover's back and scooping a handful of the genius's hair away from his neck. "Spend Christmas with me. Don't go with Agent Rossi. We'll go to the Smithsonian everyday and read in bed like we used to."

Spencer met citrine eyes so penetrating he felt violated by them. A small, almost undetectable, smudge of blue had incinerated itself on the lower corner of his left eye, making him look rather like a husky dog in some instances.

Mark walked with the easy grace of a youthful athlete, far betraying his real age. An expensive charcoal flannel suit draped elegantly over what the FBI agent knew was a sculpted body he once lusted over, owned by the man he knew he once wanted to love. A crisp white shirt and a rich opal Hermès tie were pressed beneath the jacket.

"I promised," Spencer said in a hushed tone.

His breath clouded the glass and he watched the world below him from up in his boyfriend's glass castle, a startling fortress on the edge of Langley, Virginia. He felt slender hands on his waist again and he closed his eyes, dreaming of how they used to be Aaron's.

How everything used to be Aaron and how nothing was Mark.

The CIA Intelligence officer's dark good looks were so striking Spencer couldn't blame himself for falling into the alluring web of this wealthy orphan. It wasn't a sin but beyond this moment every touch and word and breath were a challenge for the genius.

Cars below were an abundance of lights like a blazing candle that seemed lit with the prospect of freedom. He felt fear and did not know what for. He wondered idly it was for Aaron again, the man he believed he hated and the man who he could never hate. He wondered if it was for Jack, the son he never had. And if he wondered if it was because he never told either of them he was leaving for Colorado in a small space of hours after departing from the CIA.

The cloak of night stretched into the weary day as Spencer continued to stare in silence, letting warm arms encircle his waist and draw him into a strong body. Emotions he feared tangled in his eyes, the color of amber tiger-eye when the light caught the edge of his pupils.

Mark yawned into his tousled hair and barely was Spencer aware when his boyfriend stroked a smooth finger over the back of his neck and kissed behind his ear.

It wasn't Mark touching him. It was Aaron in his mind. It was Aaron holding him close and with love, shedding him of his damp coat and soaked shoes.

"You're still so wet," Mark told him gently, his tone hurt from Spencer's blatant obliviousness.

"Just hold me," Spencer said simply and with no emotion. Alabaster snow hugged the frosted windows and a roar of thunder seemed to dismember the quintessence that bound Spencer together and held him close to Mark.

_Aaron. Aaron. Aaron_.

The drive from Quantico to Langley had seemed immensely arduous, the genius pausing at each stoplight and wondering whether he should turn back, perhaps not tell Mark he was leaving.

Perhaps end their affair another day.

Aaron's eyes had been flecked with gold as Spencer had hurried past him after Annual Leave was announced at 6:30 pm. He had flown by the crestfallen expressions of McConnell's team who would serve as the proxy squad in the BAU's absence over Christmas. He had muttered goodbyes to Prentiss and Morgan and the rest of them, stealing looks of utter misery at his Unit Chief, who had looked illegally relaxed in a navy FBI windbreaker and khakis since the last day before leave was a customary casual day. He had been eating roasted peanuts at lunch which had been alarming in itself.

Roasted peanuts was like what one bought in a gas station in Georgia before buying fireworks and protesting about gun rights.

On some level Spencer wondered if Mark knew the reason for his visit.

"You could stay here with me. You can still move in." Mark offered, though his graciousness carried a sting. His patience was tiring and the young agent studied the sight of roping veins in the hands clasped around his waist and the feel of muscles flexing in the jaw that rested on his shoulder.

A part of Spencer was beginning to grow bored with the lies of intimate nothings with his boyfriend; and yet, he could not seem to take the truth that he missed his torturous entanglement with his superior. Even with all of its trimmings that were never very good but seemed to be brilliantly appealing at the worst of times.

In private, he grieved the lack of anything between him and Aaron since that morning at the breakfast table and it seemed that the handsome Unit Chief had turned a page in his dealings, no longer appearing to lust over Spencer and cry over their broken relationship.

He recalled the pressing emptiness he felt upon waking up without Aaron in the bed, for the man had taken to running or biking in the bright dawn. He smiled more and engaged more with Jack.

The drinking had stopped completely.

He would return with sunlight polishing his hair the color of chocolate and his eyes would almost touch Spencer's body and fly off like a bird as the men would pass in the hallway or in Jack's bedroom. Aaron's presence began to feel like a breeze that stirred nothing but Spencer.

"I promised," the younger agent mumbled, desperate to feel something other than sorrow for his angry past.

"Do you want me to come?" Mark smiled sweetly at their reflection in the window, turning Spencer around so their expressions collided, the FBI man's one of distant pensiveness and the other's one of calculated suspicion.

Spencer knew he had to know.

"I can get a flight tonight. I was in Denver last week, I'll say I have to do a follow-up." Tears touched Mark's eyes and anger flapped in the distance. His dark beauty seemed to turn sinister with each moment that Spencer didn't answer.

_Of course he's angry_, Spencer's heart pounded as he smudged the teardrops away from Mark's cheek, _he knows you're trying to escape him. _

It was like he was Icarus flying too close to the sun and he could feel his raw inhibitions begin to melt. Feeling whole again was rather more a luxurious thought than an anticipated recovery.

Silver rain bruised their view of Langley and Spencer flicked his eyes to Mark's closed titanium door and back to the man who's feelings were coloring his face before he could nurse them back into hiding. The exquisitely tiny diamond piercing in his right ear sparkled and Spencer never expected such a small detail to jolt and repulse him simultaneously.

He felt ashamed of using Mark, this already damaged man with so much to give and who wanted to give it all to Spencer, even when he already had all the possibilities of having multiple lovers at his fingertips.

"Don't fall in love with me." Spencer murmured, touching and tracing the angle of Mark's square jaw. His fingers lingered on the corner of his mouth and in his mind they were Aaron's lips he was touching. They were Aaron's firm and warm lips that kissed every pain and sadness away. They were the lips that greeted him in the morning and the lips that were without limits at night.

Spencer wanted to raw and without limits again. He wanted the violence in him to make love to the violence in Aaron.

But Mark's silence was everything to him.

"I didn't ask you to love me," Spencer breathed, pushing his fingers into Mark's hair and pulling the man to him. Dry lips met his and the young agent wove his hands down his lover's soft suit and hard body.

They both fought with their clothes, both wanting to make love like they were starving for they knew it would be for the last time.

"You shouldn't have to ask for something like that, Spencer Reid."

Those same lips found his shoulder and Spencer felt the cold glass against his arms as his shirt was pushed to the floor.

It felt awful and wonderful to have the rough sensation of a day's growth over his skin again.

"I didn't mean to do this to you. I never meant to." Spencer's hands surfed over Mark's naked back and they were at once on the desk together, kissing and trying so damn hard to make it last. "It's my fault."

Mark glanced up and suddenly a smug smile crossed his features, like a cat that had eaten the cream.

Spencer's stomach dropped and his heart thundered in his chest, uneasy at his lover's disturbing expression.

"Fault? _Fault_? I didn't realize there was fault involved, as in something to be blamed." The man eased up off the FBI agent and there was a sharpness and hurt that melded in his tone. "As in something not wanted. As in a mistake."

"You weren't a mistake," Spencer mumbled thickly, pulling his shirt back over his shoulders. The dampness of it from the rain chilled his chest and he shivered.

His eyes floated over the office, twinges of grief in his mind. Mark's office was a narrow and long expanse of gunmetal grey, his whole being lost in the impersonal sense of it all. Framed and boxed gifts hung behind him while he worked, as though he were too aloof to have appreciated the African war sword or the Vietnamese badge given to him by various figures of higher authority.

But Spencer knew better. He had been there when Mark had determinedly set a silver framed photo of the two of them on his desk where he would be able to glance at it throughout the day. Mark had taken Spencer to New York to show him where he had grown up...where his parents had died. He'd taken him to see the graves and it had been that night in Gramercy Park that Mark had given Spencer his watch.

It had all seemed so faultless, nothing to blight the brightness of their novel and exhilarating relationship.

And all Spencer could think about now was night he had appeared in the doorway to Aaron's hotel room. How they had slept holding hands like it was the most natural occurrence in the world. Like they had been made to fold together, to sooth each other like a stone skipped through erotic, murky waters.

Mark now sat at his desk chair, smoothing his tie over his shirt. Spencer caught the small frown on his face at the photo that stood next to one of his parents on their wedding day. The achievements and the medals and the gifts may have stood behind Mark, but what were considered his most cherished gifts were displayed on his desk to admire.

The CIA agent extracted a cigar and clipper from his suit jacket and snipped off the end. "Dipped in sugar," he started, his mood shifting violently from aggressive to indifference. "This one's vanilla, but I have cinnamon and sambuca in my car. I order them wholesale from Miami. _Cojimars_. Not to be confused with Cohibas, which are perfect, but illegal if they're Cuban versus those made in the Dominican Republic. Illegal in the U.S. at any rate." He shrugged, crossing an ankle at the knee as he studied Spencer, who was now staring at the tainted snowstorm that blazed like a white fire outside the building. The windows trembled as more thunder swarmed Langley.

"Yes, sir. I know my central intelligence." Mark blew smoke at Spencer and paused, incredible melancholy depressing his sharp features. "I'm not a child, Spencer. So what _was_ this? Social work? Charity? Sex education? Maybe you wanted a spin in my Audi?" He smoked like he was attempting to start a small fire in the middle of the agency, though his expression had softened and become less threatening.

The young genius blew out a ragged breath, holding the air in his throat for as long as possible. "No. It wasn't any of those things." He toyed with the edge of Mark's nameplate with its unfamiliar family coat of arms and CIA emblem on it.

"You got scared when you weren't angry anymore," Mark replied calmly. "That's why you were with him. He was safe. He didn't make you angry. I don't care how much you say you hated him. He was safe."

"Don't talk about something you don't know." Spencer's eyes narrowed and he felt the pricks of annoyance ignite in his heart. "Don't profile me."

Mark's laugh floated like a butterfly but stung like a wasp. "Says the great profiler of the Federal Bureau of Ignorance." He leaned forward in his chair, though without malice. "We're special, you and I, baby. We're alone in this world and we rarely think it's because we're special. We just think there's something wrong with us."

Spencer's heart stopped. It just stopped beating.

The words cut at him like a slow slicing blade because they were true. But it was Aaron who had convinced him that he was special long ago. Long ago in Miami when he handed his everything to Spencer.

The young agent felt that for the first time in his life he had that feeling. That peculiar feeling that was both one of affection and one of grave disappointment. The world was moving all around him, all beneath him and all inside him and he was floating as he caught Mark's understanding gaze. He was floating in midair and the only thing keeping him from drifting away was the thought of Aaron's eyes replacing Mark's. Those yellow eyes held fast while the rest of the world swirled and fell away completely and Spencer was left with a ghost of his furious self, all the anger and regret gone but now he didn't know what he wanted anymore.

Sugary snow spun in the air like wheels on a car and the stars were shedding their feckless shadows, preparing for night.

Rossi and Spencer's flight left in two hours. It was time to depart.

"Here," Spencer said, handing Mark the watch he had been given.

"It's yours. Keep it. It was a gift."

Silence fizzled between the men and before Spencer moved, Mark held his wrist gently, his eyes a watery shade of gold.

"I thought I could spend my life with you." He said softly. "I thought I wanted to spend _more_ life with you - that I had been with you earlier. When we met...it was like I had known you forever. I loved to hear you speak...you'd choose a word that no one would choose. The way you spoke with such passion about everything that you noticed, it would make me stop for half a second and cling to it. Life is time and time is all there is and I promised myself that I would learn all there is about you. I would learn the little things I should have learned while I was busy running away from the life I'd been given. I wanted to know how you felt after a case and I wanted to be the one to comfort you. I wanted to know how you were when you were mad or when you were happy and for a while I thought maybe I had made you happy. I promised I would learn to be something you needed..."

Mark's expression crumbled slightly but it was gone in a moment, replaced by something as cold and uncommunicative as stone.

"But I guess the only thing you needed was Aaron again."

"That's not true, Mark-"

"I wish falling in love had traffic lights. So that I would know whether to go, slow down, or just plain stop. I gave you all of my love and all you gave me was goodbye. Have a safe flight, Spencer. I hope you get what you want in the end."

The FBI agent slid off the hard steel desk, biting his lower lip. His eyes sparkled with fresh tears, as large and wet as the raindrops that slapped the windows and froze in seconds.

"I'm sorry," didn't seem enough but it was all he said and Mark said nothing as he carefully pulled a pack of Gauloises cigarettes out of the front pocket of his jacket and reached for his iPhone in its stun gun case.

That alone should have been a warning.

"I hope I get what I want too," he whispered to himself as he exited out of the office. His luminous eyes ran the length of the hallway leading downstairs and he strode with purpose to the elevator. He didn't really know if he wanted Aaron. The small window of desire he had felt had passed and he knew he had crushed Mark. He was hurting inside and it was eating at him and he wondered if it continued that there wouldn't be any of him left.

Out he went into the wild claws of the snowstorm, breaths of panic pouring from him like a dragon as he reached his car. He glanced back up to see that Mark's glass castle was too far gone to be visible from under the charcoal clouds. Ribbons of ice blue light crept through and one single lightening strike raced through the sky like a heartbeat. As he passed through the multiple guard gates he caught sight of a black R8 purring throatily around a far corner.

He thought back to Aaron's obvious recovery from Spencer ending their affair and he felt a hole in his chest at once. He felt a sudden emptiness when he realized how easily he could be forgotten along with all the memories they shared. Fear seized him as images of Aaron dreaming off the pain appeared in his mind. Maybe that Beth woman would work out for him. Maybe he would be sleeping soundly tonight, no longer wondering where Spencer was anymore, no longer waiting to hear him under the streetlights, softly breathing words of love to a strange new man.

He was hit head-on by a brutal loneliness. He felt dark and hollow, abandoned on the sidelines, a nothing but a gatherer of dust.

Maybe the scars would always remain, even if the seams were stitched back together again.

_No_, he decided, _he didn't want Aaron along on the trip._

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**More to come still! Hold on tight because Rossi's plan is going to be messed up BIG time and there might just be a little bit of a run-in at Dulles airport!**


	7. Gold Hair And Lightening

**Heyyyy. So. Sorry for not updating for the longest time. I've had a whole lot of life coming at me from these past few months. Car crashes, breakups, exams, papers...you name it. This is a short chapter but I loved writing it and hopefully you all will too!**

**Song: _Clique_ - Jay-Z & Kanye West (feat. Big Sean)**

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Emotions didn't always soften with time. They hardened. They drew edges, became like knives and became unbearable. Aaron's footsteps were a harsh echo on the polished marble floors of the CIA's International Affairs quarters and the agent made his way through the hallways like the perfect storm. He steadied his gaze on the frosted glass doors at the end of the aisle that sucked the ground right out from under him, adrenaline roaring in his veins.

Spencer hadn't looked right. Hadn't acted right at all that day.

He'd been a quivering mass of agitation and irritation all throughout work and Aaron had only made one guess as to the origin of such explosive behavior. There had been rumors around the bullpen that Mark and Spencer were working out certain issues in their relationship, but when Annual Leave had been announced and Spencer had all but flown from the building, favoring the six flights of stairs instead of the four seconds in the elevator, Aaron could only wonder where he was departing to.

_If Mark and Spencer were over_...Aaron sucked in his breath as he came to a heavy glass door etched with titanium bolts and dark wood accents. Tactful silver letters above the doorway told the agent that he had found the correct place.

**MARK GRAFF III**

**DIRECTOR OF MIDDLE EASTERN OPERATIONS**

**-CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE LIAISON, INTERNATIONAL POLICE ORGANIZATION-**

Minutes seemed like hours and Aaron could hardly believe that flashing his credentials had gotten him through the myriad terminals of security they installed for the Middle Eastern Operations floor. An imposing oak desk where the agent assumed a secretary usually sat was deserted, as was the remainder of the floor, for nine in the evening appeared to be the close of the day for intelligence officers.

Aaron knocked, steeling himself for a second or two, and then yanked the door open without waiting for an answer.

"Aaron Hotchner. I was wondering when you would darken my doorway." Narrowed golden eyes pierced the FBI agent's own brown pair as Mark slowly turned from his position by the glass wall that spilled out into a clouded view of Langley. He seemed utterly unaffected that his ex-boyfriend's ex-boyfriend had just burst into his office. "Have a seat, please."

Aaron's eyes immediately locked on Mark as the man walked with the cool confidence of someone with secrets and he slowly sat down behind a desk large enough to house the U.S. Senate at. A sharp charcoal suit was fitted perfectly to his tall frame and a black watch was wrapped securely around his slim wrist. Aaron took a seat across from Mark, feeling as though he were caught in an old Western film that demanded both men draw their weapons on count.

Of course he had already counted the number of cameras around the room, a total of 3,458 all of varying sizes and shapes, hidden among civil war paneling and up in the lighting tracks of Mark's sumptuous office. He had also noticed the fully automatic and customized Beretta px4 Storm under the man's jacket, a slim but lethal weapon in galvanized titanium and matte carbon. No doubt that Mark was carrying FangFace AT ammo, the most dangerous bullet on the market.

"Care you share your profile of me?" Mark leaned back and stretched like a sleek black panther waiting to pounce. His eyes glinted with a predatory nature. "Or should we transcend onto the exact nature of your visit? I do have to admit, however, that I am curious about what your division has to show for itself. The rather arbitrary rogue business in September with Emily Prentiss certainly didn't do you all any favors now, did it?"

Aaron felt his jaw clench and he squared his shoulders. His eyes narrowed to slits, and he resisted the urge to slug Mark and move on to looking for Spencer. There was no sign of the agent anywhere but Aaron wouldn't have put it past the CIA officer to lock his former lover up in some dungeon that most likely was housed under his desk or behind a bookcase.

The Unit Chief relaxed into his chair. Mark was no threat to him.

"You have yellow eyes but the hint of blue on your lower right iris indicates differently. You most likely grew up with blue eyes and were present at the bombings of the twin towers where you were exposed to large amounts of white light, thus affecting the pigmentation in your eyes. You evidently live in the States but your accent places you somewhere in France. You were either born and raised in Switzerland or Belgium but summered in France before being sent off to boarding school - probably TASIS in Switzerland or Exeter in America. Your international heritage and wealth has always been intimidating to others and you resent yourself for that even if you couldn't help it. That's why you keep your trophies behind you - your upbringing dictates that it's impolite to not showcase them, but you would rather treasure the people in your life over possessions and that's why you have a picture of Spencer and you in that silver frame on the end of your desk. The scar above your upper lip tells me you were involved in a number of fights during your schooling, probably during college. You're educated and you pushed yourself further than your parents demanded because you wanted out of the family business, didn't you? Graff Diamonds would just be another TASIS, another Exeter where your colleagues or friends were intimidated by you and so when your parents died on that plane, you decided to shift focus to international security and leave your wealth behind. Though that didn't really work for you now, did it Mark? You couldn't leave Graff behind because the CIA wouldn't let you. The truth was, you didn't decide to shift focuses from diamonds to criminal investigations because the CIA found you first. Your company is involved and invested in a number of different holdings - some of which you, as a luxury dealer, have no business being in. Graff holds large amounts of shares in international arms, particularly in East Asia, they own more than half the stocks of Glock, they fund scientific studies, donate to universities around the world and my wonder is how a small English jeweler became the largest player in criminal holdings and luxury goods in such a short amount of time. Surely Cartier or Harry Winston would be a company's main competitor? Not since 2008 when Graff purchased Harry Winston and collapsed it from the core out. Well that leaves Cartier, a French dealer, which means you are very familiar with them, having spent time in the country as a boy. The truth is, Mark, diamonds is only a very small part of Graff isn't it? Your important customers are not the Princess of Monaco or the Royal family of England. No, your customers are the terrorist organizations in the Middle East who trade you guns and drugs for diamonds. You supply them with the world's most expensive jewels and you in turn receive an army of carbines. But what would you be using them for? Well the CIA certainly knows. That's why you're here. That's why you're the CIA liaison for Interpol. You're the agent who is connecting other agencies with each other - you're the one going into deep-ops, selling these guns and drugs to other countries to collapse them too, just like you did with Harry Winston. It's all one big cycle, isn't it Mark? You exploit your own company for the sake of your job, which in turns throws you into the hands of the world's most dangerous and most wanted people. And that's why you were dating Spencer. You wanted to find out if the Bureau was onto you. Oh sure, the CIA can claim jurisdiction through Interpol, but once your weapons and drugs reach the coast of Virginia, they're our domain. You weren't interested in Spencer at first, he was simply a gateway of information. But then things changed. Things got interesting when you weren't simply looking for what we knew or for a good fuck. You got greedy. You wanted him to love you."

There was a moment of absolute silence until Mark blinked leisurely, straightening his suit jacket. "I beg that you curb your hyperbole, Agent Hotchner. Seems a bit far-fetched to me." He arched an eyebrow at his FBI counterpart and then leaned back, churching his fingers in front of his chest.

Aaron watched his every movement, searching for some sign of weakness.

"And bankrupt is such an..._unpleasant_ word. I prefer "absorbed." But if you're going to get technical about that, than yes, I did bankrupt Harry Winston. And de Beers for that matter as well. As for the other-" Mark waved his hand at Aaron as though the chief were an overly imaginative child not to be taken seriously, "_creative_ theories you have about me, that's neither here nor there. If you feel the need to arrest me, Agent Hotchner, then by all means proceed."

There was no fluster expected. No agitation, no surprise at all in Mark's reaction. He a vault locked down.

The man held out his wrists for Aaron, the color draining from the FBI man's face as he suddenly felt foolish for bursting into the agency unannounced with theories that Mark and the CIA would surely secure as impossible to ever prove.

"I must say I'm impressed that the Bureau has finally managed to establish a creative license. And here I imagined the BAU as merely an office of men who sat around and played Simon Says with the LEOs."

Mark stood and held out his hand for Aaron to shake. "You were correct though. I did go to Exeter."

Aaron gripped Mark's slender hand, silently surprised at the amount of force that was accompanied.

"Now," Mark cleared his throat, "before I vomit from tedium, I should let you know that Spencer is not here. Nor will he be returning. We ended our relationship and you just missed him, actually."

Aaron felt his eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

Mark's expression softened and he let go of the agent's hand. There was a moment of quiet before he spoke again, his accent more pronounced than usual. "Go after him, Aaron. He's still in love with you."

Aaron's throat went dry and he glanced down at his FBI windbreaker and khakis. "I appreciate you telling me this." As if the last two minutes hadn't happened. As if Aaron hadn't completely dissected Mark and his childhood.

"You had every right to know." There was that same smile Mark had that didn't quite reach his eyes and even he couldn't mask the sadness that swallowed his handsome expression.

"Thank you."

And then Aaron left. He stole down the hallway, his feet picking up pace until he felt as though he were running through the doors of the agency out to the parking garage. Suddenly all he wanted was to find Spencer and tell him about Colorado. Tell him everything he felt and everything he wanted to feel again.

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**Short chapter meant to be inserted between a couple of things but I hope you liked it! Raise your hand if you love Mark? I dooooo. What would you guys think about me doing a Mark/Spencer story that runs parallel to this story? Yes? No?**

** Please review! It means a lot :)**


	8. Shoot to Thrill

**Finally! The next chapter of The Lightening Strikes! Apologies for the long absence, but never fear - Thanksgiving break is here! Which means a nice peaceful break from internships and school to concentrate on writing! This chapter is a little different since it incorporates the entire team's POV. Let me know what you think of it. Enjoy!**

**Song: _Someday We'll Move to a Small Farm (And Sit and Watch the Snow Fall)_ - Linford Detweiler (as seen during JJ and Will's wedding in the Season 7 finale)/_As it Seems - _Lilly Kershaw (at the closing of the Season 7 finale when Emily is dancing with everyone - made me cry my eyes out!)_  
_**

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Winter trees were slick matchsticks in the snow banks and the sky, disturbed and distended, an untainted ivory. Heat lamps were lush lobed bulbs that flanked Washington Dulles airport, their glow slightly slurred in the dark. Shrills of goodbyes were as urgent and bladed as new grass. Rossi pushed his way through the crowds, surrounding conversations becoming like thick syrup, muffled and slow, until he reached his designated gate. Insipid murmurs of the snowstorm outside threatened flights to delay their departures and yet Spencer was still nowhere to be seen. The agent tapped his leather boot against the tile, seasoned eyes flicking to his watch every now and again. It was all the man could do without panicking that his plan would detonate in his face.

Amidst the spell of flyers, he spotted SA Thomas "Bee" Pacer from Counterintelligence, loitering around the adjacent gate announcing a flight to Vermont. A sour expression marred his face.

"It's all fun and games until someone blows off their dick," he spat furiously into his phone, locking his fingers around the barrel of one of his service weapons at his outer thigh. He eyed the twin little girls staring up at him with open mouths, making little to no effort in masking his disdain for children. "After that, it's all anger excitation and sexual sadism and all that shit the press gets off on."

Rossi snorted at the agent's words. Bee was the CID edition of Spencer Reid, an agent newer than the genius, who was relentlessly relocated between field offices since the FBI evidently couldn't decide where his arbitrary behavior would be more productive. Rossi recalled that for a while he had been on the BAU's radar after Elle resigned, before the ERF bullied Aaron into surrendering the man to them.

Vermont was apparently the next great stop.

"Sorry I'm late," a soft voice murmured behind the agent.

Rossi whipped around to see a sopping wet Spencer standing behind him, his messenger bag over one shoulder. His black pea coat sparkled with fresh snowflakes, his hair plastered around his forehead.

"Did you swim here?" Rossi held up his own hand before his colleague would answer and then shook his head. "Never mind. I'd rather not know."

Spencer exhaled and his whole frame seemed to sulk with exhaustion, as though he had been holding a breath for too long. It didn't take a profiler to detect the grief in Spencer's posture and tone and Rossi gently guided the agent over to a quiet corner, away from the bustle of the rest of the flyers.

"What's going on, Spencer? We're all worried about you."

"I'm having a hard time coping," the genius admitted, his voice hoarse with the threat of an outpour of tears.

"With what?"

"With life. Being lonely and watching all my friends walk away from me. Even the ones I thought would not."

"We didn't walk away Spencer-"

"No. You're right." The genius let a sob well up in his throat as if he couldn't hold it all in anymore.

_Well, it's about time this all came out_, Rossi thought fleetingly. He glanced at the people around the two men, some of them eyeing both agents and their guns with curiosity.

"But I was punished for being angry with what Aaron did to me. To _us_. No one understood-"

"We understood, Reid. We were just as miserable as you were."

Spencer sniffed and suddenly seemed to remember where he was standing. He pulled his messenger bag closer to his body and tugged on the sleeves of his pea coat.

"No you didn't. You all hated Mark because he wasn't Aaron. You all hated the idea of us falling apart. My demons weren't really ever silenced after Aaron ended things with me the first time. Calm as they were..." Spencer took a shaky breath, "they were waiting for a reason to wake. It just hurt so much and I couldn't take it anymore. Any of it."

He averted his gaze to meet Rossi's and then lowered it. "I ended things with him. With Mark. It's over." Hazel eyes filled with tears once more and the genius drew his lower lip into his mouth, absolute sadness staining his face.

Rossi clasped Spencer around the shoulder and gave it a small squeeze. "Aaron?"

"No. Not just because of him." Spencer looked about the Christmas pandemonium that surrounded the two men, scrubbing a hand over his lowered eyes. "Everything I touch I ruin," he said quietly. "I am Midas in reverse."

A minute passed in sated silence.

"I don't even recognize myself anymore," Spencer continued, his frown deepening. His eyes darkened. "I don't know who I am. And the worst is when you lose an I."

Rossi remained silent for a few moments. His gaze drifted over his friend, knowing that in the earlier years, Spencer had come to hug his solitude like a shield. And when finally he had let that go, Aaron had bulldozed right through it, causing the genius to once more revert back into his misunderstood soul. "You wore him around your neck like a locket, Spencer. We all saw it." he began. "But remember, a locket can choke you."

The genius nodded, though it seemed to be mostly to himself. His bottom lip quivered again and he closed his eyes for a moment.

"He gave me clinomania. The excessive desire to stay in bed."

Rossi let a small chuckle escape and he clapped the man on his back. If Spencer was cracking jokes, that was all that the elder agent could ask for. "You'll be okay, kid. Come on, they're calling our flight."

"You know you think it will never happen to you - all this bad stuff." A strangely serene expression settled over Spencer's defined features, a dreamy blanket to his tone. "That it can't happen to you. You think you're the only person in the world where none of this stuff can happen to you. We see what happens to the victims and sometimes it's hard to see it happening to one of us the way it did with Emily. Then one by one, all these bad things that you never thought would happen...just happen, man." He shrugged.

Rossi blew out a breath, watching Spencer walk ahead of him to the flight attendant collecting tickets. He stood still for a few moments, thoughts pooling in his mind. It was no secret that Rossi believed in love. It pained him to see such a young man once filled with awe and wanderlust completely retreat into himself, hardening to little more than a shadow of mean again. The affair with Mark had softened Spencer for a while. He'd grown more confident, calmer with himself. And now it was all blown to pieces and Rossi couldn't quite believe that he was thanking the heavens that Mark and Spencer were over.

So he held true to love. He believed it happened between two people for a reason and sometimes that reason was hidden behind thorns waiting to be clipped. He didn't believe in coincidence but rather in fate. And he believed that when people said sorry, the real apology was when one heard the sadness in their voice, saw the look in their eyes, and realized that they had hurt themselves just as much.

And he prayed to God that Aaron and Spencer would realize that in each other when they saw one another.

The sound of raindrops thundered over the glass roof of the airport terminal and the pound was the perfect lullaby for what Rossi knew was going to be the coming of the perfect storm.

* * *

Aaron slowly blinked, steadying his gaze on the black night that sucked the road out from in front of him. Lights from the highway were veined apricot across the darkness, bright with pressure, and the Unit Chief was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on not mowing down the stuttering blue bug of a vehicle in front of him.

His mind once more drifted to Spencer and the man's behavior earlier that morning. The genius had been like a live wire, a moving, quivering mass of ammunition that threatened to blow at any moment. He had practically blown past Aaron at the end of the day, favoring the six flights of stairs downstairs to the garage instead of standing in the elevator with his former lover for all of about four seconds.

Aaron drew his brows together and his chest tightened. He felt as though he were waiting in a world that Spencer cared little for. He'd moved on, he'd said his piece. And yet his lover seemed to become more agitated at that. The morning of Betty Brown pie seemed to be but a perfectly unattainable stretch of the past that Aaron could no longer grasp. It was a thorn in his side that he found he could not shake.

Mark's cryptic words echoed in his mind. _He's still in love with you_.

_Concentrate_, Aaron told himself. _Colorado_.

He stepped harder on the gas pedal and he felt the gentle thrust of his SUV as it pressed forward. A sign declaring the state of Kentucky was a mere blur in the wind and yet the red digital clock on Aaron's dashboard that read 10:34 pm was irritatingly clear.

Jack had passed out within the first ten minutes of the car ride, having evidently exhausted himself from relentlessly asking his father if they were there yet, despite the fact that they had barely passed the stop sign at the end of their street. Aaron felt his lips tug up in a small smile and he reached his right hand over to gently stroke back Jack's blonde hair. His son's tenacity had hardly fallen far from the apple tree and the Unit Chief recalled certain memories of him displaying similar behavior at a young age. And of course on their summer drive to Georgia with Spencer had yielded similar results, both son and lover urging each other to madden Aaron to the point that the man threatened to leave both on the side of the road.

"Spencer, I'm about to leave you by the highway in a minute." Aaron had arched a dark eyebrow at his partner, reveling in the impish look that resulted.

"Daddy, can we go on horses when we get there? Can we go riding?" Jack had all but yelled from the backseat. His son still had yet to learn to use his inside voice and felt the need to scream everything.

"Sorry, Buddy, there won't be horses where we are." Aaron smiled at the memory of how Spencer had leaned back and whispered, "You can ride your daddy around the hotel room, Jack."

Aaron sighed again. He couldn't win. Not once. He was in a perpetual limbo with Spencer with no hope of relief in the near future. He felt not only butterflies but fireflies when he thought about how they used to be...how they were so in love with one another before their apartment had turned into an echo chamber of martial discord.

_Colorado_, Aaron thought again. He glanced at the GPS, which told him there were only 18 more hours to go. He sighed and drove on, silently pressing on the gas. _He could beat 18 hours._

Easily.

* * *

The aisles of the plane were clustered with fragile Christmas presents, nylon duffel bags and lazy flyers' feet as Spencer and Rossi navigated their way through to their respective seats. The younger agent wrinkled his nose at the cloying, smug smell of recycled air usually found in airplanes. The luxury of the BAU Gulfstream suddenly seemed too far away to remember and Spencer pulled his jacket closer to his body.

Thoughts of Mark tumbled in his mind and he forced them to leave, to dissipate as quickly as they had come. He glanced up, sliding into the window seat and his heart dropped as he caught the profile of a man who looked very much like his CIA lover. The same dark hair, expensive suit and sharp features all shimmered under the florescent lighting of the plane and Spencer forced himself to sit down calmly and not leap from his seat, hijack a car, and veer into the river so he could drown in peace for once, no longer haunted by Aaron or Mark.

"Hey, kid," Rossi frowned at his wide-eyed expression, "if you're going to vomit, do it in that direction." He pointed at the frosted window.

"Italian suit?" Spencer arched an eyebrow at him, his lips curling into a small smile.

"Italian suit."

Stewardesses bustled to and fro down the narrow aisle, offering up hot chocolate and small snacks to passengers as the airplane jerked forward and up the runway for take-off.

"Sir? You're going to have to turn off your phone, please." A perky blonde stewardess smiled at Rossi, who was currently engrossed in an email from Aaron on his Blackberry that told him the Unit Chief and Jack had gotten along safely a few hours ahead of schedule. He angled the screen away from Spencer.

"What?" Rossi glanced up distractedly.

"Sir, your phone." The woman's smile tightened as she eyed Rossi's gun and badge on his belt. "It disrupts the airplane's radio frequencies. You'll need to switch it off until we land, please."

Rossi opened his mouth to reply but was cut off when Spencer leaned over him in a way that was far too close for comfort.

"Actually, that's untrue." The agent said, using that special tone of voice he reserved for longwinded explanations. Rossi knew it all too well and rolled his eyes. "We're flying in a Lockheed Eagle Series L-1011, equipped with a Sim-5 transponder tracking system and 2012 radio intercepting systems that were developed after 9/11 to document oncoming messages received by other flying devices around it. Actually, did you know that-"

"And you're telling me I can bring this whole thing down by something I bought at Best Buy?" Rossi finished, smirking lightly. He hadn't turned his phone off on a plane since the Goddamn Vietnam war and he wasn't about to start doing it now.

The stewardess was silent, staring straight at the two FBI agents with her eyes narrowed into two hate-filled squints.

"Have you two gentlemen completed the Law Enforcement Officers Flying Armed training program?" She all but snapped.

Rossi exhaled as Spencer launched into a lecture on the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 49, Chapter XII, Subchapter C, Part 1544 Subsection 219 before tailing off onto the differences between the FBI, the U.S Department of State, and DoD's variations on the definition of terrorism. The stewardess stood there, her mouth slightly open while her fingers clutched angrily at an empty plastic tray.

"The U.S. Department of Defense officially defines terrorism as the unlawful of use of - or threatened use of - violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious or ideological objectives. Interestingly enough, these definitions were defined after the 1980s when the U.S. considered the Taliban as freedom fighters until 2001-"

"Enough, Reid. You're starting to smell like an overheated computer chip." Rossi held up a hand and smiled innocently at the stewardess. "Can we get some coffee? And a few boxes of sugar? I'll stick with the cup that cheers but doesn't inebriate."

"You'll need it with that one," the woman mumbled under her breath, as she stomped away.

Both agents felt the lift of the plane as it roared into the night sky and Rossi turned once more to regard his young companion, who's face had slipped back into an expression of misery. It was difficult for Rossi to decide whether Spencer was upset over Mark or over Aaron, because even his own emotions hid from him at times. The genius could only catch a glimpse of his feelings, but only out of the corner of his eye, like distant headlights reflected in a side mirror. Only by not looking for them directly, did he have any chance of truly finding how he felt. Rossi closed his eyes as Spencer took out a thick book on international political economy. Obviously a real page-turner.

Outside, sleet jostled the ascending plane and wind snapped like silk as Washington D.C. became nothing more than a glistening dream, a blurred ashtray of forgotten lovers and secrets to be seen.

* * *

"I can't see shit!" A harsh voice jarred Penelope from her welcome backseat slumber and she jolted upright, blinking in the dark of the car. "There's no road here!"

The tech analyst squinted into the night, the sky and snow as thick as octopus ink. She bit her lip and met Emily's conical glower in the rearview mirror of the female agent's green Jaguar. Somewhere on I-670 west they had lost the road and their navigator had evidently fallen asleep in the passenger seat.

Penelope leaned forward from the backseat and slapped the back of a sleeping Morgan's head. His mouth hung open while his hands barely gripped _NYPD Red_ close to his chest.

"Derek!" Penelope snapped as the agent jerked awake, twisting in his seat. "There's no road!"

Morgan looked ahead. "Don't blame me! I thought you were following JJ and Will! Where did they go?"

"I told them to keep driving when you two _insisted_ we pull over to "take a quick peek" in the Museum of Hillbillies in Kentucky! They're probably in another state by now!" Emily barked, jamming on the breaks to pull off to a roadside stop. "Where's the GPS?"

"We don't need the GPS, I've got us covered!" Morgan sat up as though preparing to take on the storm himself.

"Morgan, you fell asleep. Where's the GPS? I haven't seen it since we pulled over to go to the bathroom in West Virginia." Garcia raised her eyebrows and held out her hand.

The agent looked sheepish for a moment and then sighed. "I left it in the bathroom."

"Why the hell did you need it in the bathroom? Were you afraid you'd get lost between the parking lot and the bathroom door straight ahead?" Emily yelled, angrily shutting off her car and facing both her colleagues.

"No!" Morgan retorted, frowning. "It needed charging and there was a port in the bathroom. I _thought_ I was helping."

"And then what?"

"And then Reid texted me saying that he had broken up with Mark and he was on his way to Dulles to meet Rossi. I got distracted, he doesn't know we're surprising Hotch and him in Colorado."

"_If_ we ever get to Colorado," Garcia rolled her eyes. "Leave it to me to save the day, yet again." She pulled her laptop out of her purse and powered it up, typing at a furious pace to secure a signal. "I can pull up MapQuest if I get a connection."

Emily sighed in frustration. "The snow is two miles thick. The only connection we're going to get is all of us bonding while we freeze to death on the side of the road."

"Okay," Morgan held up his hands. "Start the car and we'll keep driving. We'll eventually pass some signs that will tell us where we're going."

"Fine." Emily huffed, turning the key in the ignition. "But if we end up in Arkansas, you're the one buying the first class tickets home. And if we see someone, we're pulling over and asking for directions."

"We can't do that!" Garcia almost shrieked. "Have we not learned to never approach drifters on the side of the road, my fine-minded chickadees?"

"We'll have Morgan talk to them then," Emily replied. "He speaks unstable psychopath."

"Oh princess," Morgan chuckled. "I wouldn't beg you to spit, even if my eyebrows were on fire."

"Thank you for your altruism, Agent Morgan. I'm sure you'll make some poor soul very happy one day."

* * *

Spencer looked up sharply as the in-flight P.A system crackled to life above his head. He'd been absorbed in reading Edith Warton's _The Age of Innocence,_ having already blown through Henry Crumpton's _The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service_ when the plane took a sharp drop downward a few minutes ago. The whole aircraft shook violently and he slid his gaze to Rossi, who was clutching the armrest in a white-knuckled grip.

"I didn't realize you were afraid of flying." He said, closing his book on his finger to keep his place.

"I'm not, kid." Rossi glared at the genius.

"Did you know that in 1988, over 577 deaths occurred during commercial air travel, and that-"

"Stop. Please."

Spencer shut his mouth and drew his lower lip into his mouth. After a moment, he spoke again. "I'm just saying that for man of your age, flying-"

"My _age_?"

Spencer shut up once more, looking appropriately apologetic. He looked as though he were about to speak again, when he was interrupted by the pilot overhead.

"Hey folks, we're heading into some ugly weather and I have just received notice that we're going to have to land in Chicago for the time being until this storm passes. I apologize for the inconvenience. The stewardesses will be passing by shortly to answer any questions you might have. Please keep your seats upright and your tray tables in the upright position. We'll be cleared for landing in about 54 minutes." The seatbelt sign blinked on.

Spencer looked at Rossi, his eyes filled with alarm, but the veteran agent visibly blanched. His plan seemed to be quickly spiraling into a chaotic ending. If they were stuck in Chicago, Aaron and the rest of the team would be stuck standing outside his house in Vail with no keys to get in.

_Shit_, Rossi cursed silently. _We were supposed to get there first. _He took his Blackberry from his pocket and, angling it away from Spencer to avoid being hit by the young man's wild gesturing about emergency landings, sent a short email to Aaron.

_**Flight re-routed to Chicago. See you in Illinois. **_

A few minutes later, his phone started blinking red with a new email.

_**I'll pick you up at the airport. We're glad to have the company.**_

_Oh you'll be glad alright, Aaron, _Rossi thought, his heart sinking.

* * *

_**Please review :)**_


	9. And We'll Go Back to December

**Thank you to everyone who has reviewed/alerted and favorited this story so far. And thank you to everyone who is following it! It's you wonderful girls and guys who I owe all my motivation to :) Enjoy!**

**Song: **_**Untouched**_** - The Veronicas/**_**I Can't Make You Love Me**_** - Bon Iver.**

* * *

The Lockheed Eagle was a brief glimpse between the charcoal clouds, their eaves and bows turning silver from the reflection of the usual madness of an airport below. Aaron tucked his hands further into the pockets of his dark jeans and hunched his shoulders in his black North Face jacket, instantly reminded as to why he hated the windy city. Having grown up in Virginia, he was more than used to enduring bitter winters that lasted until April, but Illinois' brutal air never failed to chill him to the bone. He didn't know how Morgan could stand it. Jack had already been scrambling out of the car as soon as Aaron had pulled into the short-term lot and had raced out into the blizzard with the sort of glee found only in a child who wanted to make snow-angels in the middle of a parking lot. The FBI agent suddenly grinned as he pictured Spencer's face if the man were in Chicago too.

His former lover was a perpetual objector to _voluntarily_ visiting cities with snow since he considered Washington D.C. bad enough. Aaron knew Spencer would have been already making his lemon-sucking face at the thought of standing outside in the snow at O'Hare International and tiring himself out with a discourse on the benefits of living in warmer climates. He wondered what Spencer was doing now, having ended things with Mark. He hadn't been home when Aaron packed everything up and piled his and Jack's suitcases in the car. Maybe he was staying at Morgan's or maybe he was in Vegas. Aaron felt his stomach drop as he remembered he hadn't even sent any sort of message to Spencer about him leaving for the holidays.

_So much for caring, Aaron,_ he cursed himself, keeping an eye out for his son, who had taken it upon himself to direct people streaming out of the revolving doors. He smiled as he watched a young mother indulge Jack and obediently go left with her luggage. She grinned at Aaron, obviously connecting him as the father.

The Unit Chief dug out his phone to send a message to the genius when Rossi's name appeared on his screen. Assuming his longtime coworker had landed, Aaron absently pressed ignore and ducked his head against the falling snow, ready to head inside.

"Come on, buddy. Let's go get Uncle Dave, shall we?" He called, reaching out to dust fat snowflakes off his son's head.

"Awesome!" Jack cheered, immediately abandoning his duties as a self-appointed traffic coordinator. He raced at top speed through the revolving doors. Aaron watched, his frown smoothing into a smile, as Jack went around and around in the doors like Buddy had in _Elf_ and then finally dashed through the crowd in search of Rossi.

* * *

"Who are you calling?" Spencer drew his brows together in confusion, huffing in annoyance as he tried diligently to keep up with Rossi's frantic footsteps. He pulled his messenger bag over his shoulder, wondering what on earth had caused the agent to completely lose his cool. Normally the picture of calm and collected, Rossi had been checking his cell phone every two seconds and whipping his head around the open baggage claim area like a palm tree in a Florida hurricane since they had landed over twenty minutes ago.

"They said we were on the next flight out of here tomorrow morning. Why are you freaking out?" He called after the agent's retreating back, hurrying through the crowds of people closing around him. "Sorry!" He called distractedly at an old woman who he had definitely whipped in the head with his scarf by accident.

"We'll be driving," Rossi replied gruffly once the two men reached their baggage claim station. Suitcases were already traveling around the belt and Rossi immediately hauled his suitcase and Spencer's off and into the genius' hands. "Hold these, I need to make a phone call."

"Driving?" Spencer frowned. "Why can't we just fly tomorrow?" He dropped the bags, growing more suspicious of his colleague's blatant vagueness. He scanned Rossi's turned profile, taking in the clenched jaw and narrowed eyes, profiling the man in about two seconds flat. "Are we meeting someone here?" He finally asked.

"He's not picking up," Rossi growled to himself, moving away from Spencer again and taking off into the crowds. "Pick _up,_ Aaron." He repeated.

"Aaron?" Spencer's face immediately paled and he froze in his tracks but Rossi was quickly disappearing into the hoards of people. "Rossi!" He called, though he knew it was useless. He grabbed the bags, sliding his own duffel bag over his other shoulder, and dashed after the man. "Rossi, wait! _Aaron Hotchner?!"_

* * *

"Jack! Hold up, buddy." Aaron called out, quickening his pace to reach his son. Jack tugged his father's hand impatiently and his were eyes bright and excited.

"Come on, daddy! We need to find Uncle Dave!" The boy insisted.

"I know we do," Aaron crouched to straighten his son's jacket, which had been buttoned up incorrectly. "But we don't have to yell for him. Remember what I said about using your inside voice?"

"Use your inside voice inside!" Jack yelled proudly, startling a small group of flyers around them.

"Right," Hotch sighed, standing up again. _Relax, Aaron_, he told himself. _You're on bloody vacation, not in a federal disciplinary hearing._

"We have to go get him!" Jack repeated, yanking on the zipper of Aaron's jacket. The Unit Chief scanned the luggage claim area around them, searching for a glimpse of Rossi's signature dark hair and salt-and-pepper beard. He pulled his phone out of his pocket again.

**Missed call (3). Rossi, David.**

Aaron was about to call the agent back when he felt Jack jerk out of his grasp. "Jack?" He whipped around and swore he almost blacked out as he came face to face with a thoroughly enraged expression on an eerily familiar face. Two hazel eyes were narrowed into slits of spitting fury.

"Uncle Spencer!" The boy hollered, charging at the genius and wrapping his arms around the agent's legs. Aaron stood, dumbfounded, as he stared at his former lover right in front of him. His whole body felt as though it was burning up and he knew his face was beginning to turn pink with the shock of seeing his ex in the middle of an airport in _Chicago_ of all places.

"Wha...?'Aaron couldn't seem to get the words out of his mouth as Spencer just stood there, fuming.

The genius' usually placid expression was now what it had been back in September and Aaron felt his throat go dry and his heartbeat speed up as memories of how angry Spencer could be flooded into his mind. It was like staring into the face of the agent's evil twin.

"What are you doing here?" Spencer demanded quietly, his voice wavering as he glared at Aaron. He knelt to hug Jack and forced a smile onto his face, swallowing audibly. "Hey, little man." He whispered, and Aaron could see that the joy of seeing his son was genuine, even though seeing Aaron was not. "What are you guys doing here?" He repeated, though it was more for Jack's benefit.

"We're getting Uncle Dave!" Jack grinned at Spencer, obviously enthralled that his favorite uncle was now here.

"Hey, Jack, why don't I show you the aquarium over there?" Rossi's voice sounded from behind both Spencer and Aaron.

The FBI agents turned to see Rossi's guilty face, flushed with adrenaline, looking expectantly at the youngest Hotchner who was overjoyed to have everyone around him. Obviously the agent knew if the men were going to have it out with each other, it was better for Jack to be far, far away. Between the two of them - Aaron dark like the markings of a leopard and Spencer colored with rage - Jack looked like an innocent lion club caught between two predators ready to tear into each other.

Aaron swallowed and nodded at Jack. "Go on, buddy," he coaxed. "We'll be right here waiting when you get back."

"Uncle Dave!" Jack raced away and Rossi took the boy's hand to guide him over to the fish tank, while Spencer and Aaron were left staring at each other in disbelief.

A moment of silence passed between them, the fact that they were both standing in front of one another taking its time registering in both men's minds.

"Did you orchestrate this?" Spencer finally spat, his eyes running down the length of his handsome superior. "You just couldn't let me leave in peace?"

"_Me_? I didn't know you were with Rossi!" Aaron fought the urge to yell his response back because goddamn it, he was _not_ to be blamed for this mess. His chest tightened in despair as he felt the peaceful moments between he and Spencer a few weeks ago slip further away, buried forever.

The younger agent glanced away, appearing as though he were going to deck the living shit out of Rossi right there by the aquarium. Tears welled up in his eyes and he swept his gaze to the ceiling, exhaling shakily.

"Stop it." He broke out finally. "Just stop it. I'm tired of constantly fighting you." His eyes flicked soullessly to his former lover. "I thought I was doing you a favor by leaving for Christmas."

Aaron was silent, his teeth grinding together. "Well, I assumed the same." He struggled to keep his tone neutral.

"Thanks for your altruism." Spencer's voice dripped with sarcasm and he crossed his arms over his chest, a man-made prison to protect himself. "First North Dakota, then Emily and now this. It's like you get off on hurting me."

"That's not fair," Aaron replied. His fingertips felt icy in his palms and he suddenly was exhausted. His shoulders dropped. "We were both tricked and obviously the plan failed. But we're here now. Please believe me when I say that I didn't know about this. I thought I was just picking up Rossi and we were going to drive to Colorado."

Spencer was looking at the floor when he finally answered. "Well you all should go. I'm going to go back to D.C."

"Spencer, you can't spend Christmas alone."

"That wasn't going to stop you from leaving before."

Aaron fell silent again, knowing it was true.

"Please, Spencer? Let's don't ruin it-"

"You ruined it when you lied to me! You ruined it all, Aaron!" Spencer shouted, throwing his hands up in the air and letting them slap against his sides.

"Can we not do this here?"

"You know I beginning to wonder something," the genius continued, ignoring his superior's attempts to coax him into a corner and away from the throngs of people starting to gather around them. "I wonder if the only thing I learned from this relationship is that sorry isn't good enough sometimes. You were fucking gaslighting me, Aaron. I thought I was going to end up just like my mother."

The Unit Chief's posture went rigid, and he could feel each verbal bullet his subordinate was throwing his way penetrate his body.

"I'm sorry, Spence." He shook his head. "But we've had this conversation before. I couldn't tell you. I thought...I thought everything was getting better."

"That doesn't mean I want to spend Christmas with you."

Aaron closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. "I don't know what else to say. I still love you, Spencer. I know you ended it with Mark and I still love you."

"Save it, Aaron. I don't want to hear it."

"Spencer-"

"Aaron, I can't. Please," the younger agent's expression softened and he bit his quivering bottom lip. "Understand why, Aaron. Please."

"I'm trying to. I thought that morning after I came back from running we were going to be okay."

"We _will_ be okay. Aaron. But I don't love you." Spencer watched as his former lover's eyes darkened. His lips formed a flat line and he became silent.

Moments passed and the two agents stood there amongst the chaos of the airport as Spencer's words sunk in. The genius knew what he was saying as a lie, but he also knew that while the scars of their emotional war had faded on the surface, they would forever be carved into his bones. And he wasn't sure if he had it in him to let Aaron take the knife again. He hoped deep down that one day, when he would be sleeping...dreaming off the pain...he would hear Aaron's voice. Somewhere under the streetlights' shadows, under their gentle humming, he would realize Aaron was fighting for him again, softly breathing out his name.

Aaron stared miserably at the floor under his feet, listening to Spencer's breathing.

"Sweetheart," he would have said to the genius, and "darling," and "honey." He would have rolled the words over his tongue, relished the way they mixed with the taste of his mouth, his breath and his heart.

Instead Aaron found himself standing in front of Spencer with nothing more to say other than the same words he had been uttering for the past several months. It was December again and now it was as though nothing had changed at all.

"You're coming to Colorado, Spencer." He heard himself say in surprise. "You're coming with us if I have drag you there by your hair."

The younger agent looked up sharply, taken aback by Aaron's harsh words. "You can't make me."

"Yes I can-"

"I'm a grown man, Aaron. Don't pull your Alpha Male shit with me."

"You're coming because if I know Dave, and I do, then I know the rest of the team is coming. And I don't want you sitting at home alone in our apartment wishing you were with us. And I know you don't want that either. You can ignore me all you want, but don't punish the team for something that I did."

Spencer eyed Aaron warily.

"Now, we're going to go get in the car and then come pick up my son and Dave. And then we're all going to drive together."

"I'm not getting in the car," Spencer shook his head, storming outside to look for a cab. Aaron ran after the agent, grabbing his arm, his eyes narrowed.

"Get in the fucking car or so help me, I will put you in there myself. You are not being left in the middle of a strange airport on Christmas." Aaron pointed to his car and felt his blood start to boil when Spencer just stood there defiantly.

"Get in the motherfucking car right now." The Unit Chief pointed again angrily and took Spencer's bags from him. "Let's go." He jutted his chin at the black SUV, making it known that he was going to watch Spencer walk to the car and make sure he got in.

"Maybe you should just whistle and have the monkeys come bring the broom round for you. Might be faster." Spencer hissed before stamping toward his ex-boyfriend's car.

Aaron's lips twitched but he quelled the smile that was trying to work itself onto his face. As much as he was angry with Rossi and with Spencer's hurtful words, he missed his former lover's quick-witted jokes.

The two agents climbed into the car but it was only a few hours later that anyone spoke. Rossi had offered to drive back down through Illinois since it had been a long detour for the Hotchners to take in the first place and they had just passed a welcome sign for Kansas. Jack had insisted he sit in the back seat with his father and Spencer and so it was now that Aaron found himself wedged against the right side of his own car while his son curled in his lap, asleep. He glanced at Spencer who was listening to an audiobook on his iPod, pointedly refusing to look in Aaron's direction.

"Are we talking yet?" Aaron murmured, keeping an eye on Rossi who was listening to opera up front.

"No." Spencer replied and Aaron's mouth curled into a semblance of a smile at their juvenile interaction.

More time passed and the car remained soundly calm...or as calm as it could be. They were now just driving into Colorado, having passed the border sign just under thirty minutes ago. Aaron slid his eyes over to the younger agent again as his playlist came to a close on his iPhone. Spencer's head was occasionally falling against the window and it was obvious he was having trouble staying awake.

"Spencer, you're tired. You can sleep." Aaron said softly, watching the snowfall outside of the window.

Spencer stilled for a moment or two and then he sighed. It wasn't an answer but it was enough for now. Aaron watched on as the younger man let the fight go out of him and he lay his head against the window. It was only when they reached Denver that Aaron jerked awake to realize both Jack and Spencer had turned to his side of the car, still sleeping. Spencer pressed up against Aaron's thigh and gently, very silently, the Unit Chief laid a hand on his former lover's hair, stroking his fingers through the thick stands.

Mark's words returned to his memory once more just before he fell asleep again for the next four hours, sitting with his son in his lap and his subordinate nuzzled into his side.

_He's still in love with you._

* * *

**What did you guys think? Finally Aaron and Spencer come face to face with each other! Stay tuned for the next chapter where hopefully both agents start to feel something for each other again :) I know you all have been hoping for a little fluff!**

**Please review**


	10. Last Smoke Before The Snowstorm

**I owe everyone a massive apology for basically dropping off the grid for the past few months but a whole lot of life hit me at one time and then I was in the Caribbean without internet access or phone service for a while but I'm back and so is AFIII :) Enjoy and don't hate me!**

**Song: _Pictures/Atlas Hands_ (basically been my entire existence lately and everyone should listen to these songs) - Benjamin Francis Leftwich/_Sweetheart, What Have You Done To Us?_ - Keaton Henson. **

* * *

Icicles dripped from naked trees like diamonds, sparkling and swaying as snow flurries became torrential white violence. Rocks snapped and crackled at the undercarriage of Aaron's SUV as the car slowly made its way around the meandering roads of Beaver Creek, Colorado. Morning had come only a few hours ago, the sun turning smoky rouge that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. It was evening again, the rotations of drivers recycled back to Rossi directing the car toward Vail.

Spencer jolted awake, lifting his body up and away from where he had been resting against Aaron's thigh for several hours. The car came to a halt at the foot of a steep and buried pathway, and his hazel eyes immediately assessed his surroundings. The blue glow of the headlights ahead lit Rossi's silent profile from the driver's seat, and the young agent turned to lean his head on the cool glass window, going hollow as he realized he had woken from a dream so vivid and all too familiar.

Spencer had been in bed with Mark, their warm limbs intertwined as they looked on at empty space, cut off from the rest of their respective worlds.

"I thought I loved him," Spencer had murmured

"What's love?" Mark rolled over, gold eyes sleepy and hurt. "If a man asks a woman 'do you love me?' and if, after a long and awkward pause and considerable deliberation, she replies 'well, up to a certain point, under certain conditions, to a certain extent,' then we can be sure that whatever it is she feels for this poor man is not love."

Spencer had paused, as touches became desperate and fierce and not one of them spoke again before Mark had broken away from a punishing kiss. A pain Spencer thought of as deliberate and spiteful.

"Is that not what Aaron did to you?" Right eyebrow raised, citrine eyes now sharp and inquisitive. "If love is a measure, the only measure of love is love without measure."

Spencer looked at him through the dreamy haze, over and across the expanse of white sheets.

"It represents a giving, without holding back, an unconditional commitment, which marks love with a certain excess. There is no merit in loving moderately."

_There is no merit in loving moderately._

Mark's words stung Spencer.

"I suppose I loved Aaron. But there were certainly conditions. He hurt me. Does that not draw a line somewhere?"

"You tell me, Spencer. You're the one who ran away from him." Mark's fingers were smoothing the genius's hair away from his face.

"What if I hurt you? Would you not love me anymore?"

"I've been hurt before." _Of course he had_. "Far more than anything you could even fathom. You wouldn't hurt me and I wouldn't stop loving you."

_Of course that was no longer true. This was dream-Mark, and in reality Spencer had hurt the man and Mark would stop loving him just like everyone did eventually. _

"So you love me?" Spencer had then placed a hand on Mark's bare chest, the skin warm and welcoming under his fingertips.

"I love you, Spencer. How could I not?" Mark had pushed up, moving over his lover. But when their lips met it had been Aaron Spencer had been with.

And now sensations lingered where Aaron's hands and mouth had been, nerves alive and wanting.

_How long had he been sleeping? _

Spencer slid his eyes to his left, where his superior was sleeping stoically against the car door, propped up at an awkward angle. Jack's head was against his father's thigh and Aaron's hand lazily traced circles over his son's back. Spencer swallowed, eyeing the patterns the man's hands were making, for they had always made those patterns on the agent's own naked skin. His fingertips tingled as he fought the immediate urge to slide close to Aaron and stroke the lean muscles of his chest and arms, not even knowing why these feelings were suddenly surfacing again.

Again, Mark's words from the unwelcomed and bizarre dream floated in his mind. _There is no merit in loving moderately._

A few months ago, there had been times when Spencer had been afraid to fall asleep. He had battled the fluttering eyes, the drowsy movements, and the relentless yawns for fear that by falling asleep he would wake up to find his days with Aaron cut short. Erased. He had come to dread leaving the day's delicate moments behind and every morning he was met with surprise, a flirtation with fate, that promised the moments were still there. He would turn and stretch to look into dark eyes that were warm for him, for his heart. He would know that today, _that_ day, would be a good day.

And now for all of Spencer's doctorates, degrees, and wealth of knowledge, he could not figure out why the embers of what he felt for Aaron had begun to burn again. Of course the anger of betrayal - _again_ - was sour in his stomach, but it was a little harder to ignore, a little more difficult to explain this time around.

He turned back to Aaron again before noticing the flickering of headlights that colored the man's elegant and handsome face.

He swiveled in his seat.

Of course more cars were behind them. And the young FBI agent was confident that they belonged to JJ and Will, and Emily.

"Are we here?" Spencer mumbled to Rossi, leaning forward and stretching out the muscles between his shoulder blades. He was eager to leave his thoughts of his powerful CIA and equally powerful FBI exes trapped in the car.

The veteran agent turned, surprised by the interruption of silence and then glanced at the other vehicles gathering behind Aaron's.

"Almost. Vail is about a twenty-minute drive from here. The house is up this road." The man paused and then spoke after a few moments. "Reid, I didn't mean to bring you here under false pretenses. My intention was not to hurt you."

"I know that," Spencer exhaled slowly, meeting his teammate's apologetic gaze. He felt Jack's feet push against his legs as the boy stretched himself further across the backseat. He settled his slender fingers on Jack's back absent-mindedly but drew them away when he skimmed Aaron's hand by accident, the touch too similar to what he had been feeling in his dreams.

"JJ, Will and Henry are here?"

"Hmmm mmm." Rossi turned his attention back toward the pathway and then shifted Aaron's car into the off-road setting.

"And Emily and Morgan and Garcia?"

"Yes, everyone was invited."

Spencer sighed, drawing his pea coat closer around his body. He often found that the most distressing affliction was to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Aaron give a small stretch. His eyes slowly opened and for a moment, their gazes caught, their breath held. Aaron's eyes were filled with their familiar, and now expected, sadness while Spencer's own hazel eyes were a concoction of trepidation and wistfulness. The genius eventually broke the shared look, turning and coughing in the direction of the window.

It was too soon. Too soon after ending his relationship with Mark. Too soon after being betrayed in an airport in Chicago by those he was supposed to trust each and every day.

It was just too...soon.

Mark's words battled for another chance to haunt the man and Spencer wouldn't let them in.

Snowflakes swarmed and darted by at frantic speeds, freckling the windows of Aaron's car so much so that it looked as though the agents and Jack were cocooned from the world.

Rossi carefully navigated the car up the steep road as the Unit Chief bit his tongue to keep from being a backseat driver and Spencer listened, refusing to turn his head. They sat in silence while Jack continued to sleep, and, behind them, Morgan drew Emily's Jaguar up to full tilt, packing the snow beneath the tires. The LaMontagnes followed and Spencer wondered whether it was too late to be left on the side of the highway.

As he stared back into the face of darkness, he let his mind wander back to the night when he had first visited Aaron Hotchner, a man who was sophisticated, cool to the point of not feeling anything. It was a night he often thought about, though it became easier and easier to remember each moment in complete clarity. The nervous laughter, the somber looks, the brushing of fingers was stark like ink on pages because now, if Spencer was honest, he had moments like that very rarely. He had never been particularly talented at noticing when he was happy, except maybe in retrospect. He could have said his real weakness was a kind of long-sightedness. Usually it was only from a distance, and much too late, that he could see far-flung spots of perfection in his lifetime.

Rossi's house was nestled among clusters of black spruce and aspens, all of them thick on the edge of the mountain. Saplings grew at steep angles, the slender boughs straining over the estate before gravity bended them back. The house itself was exposed brick and smooth stone, with modern plated glass for windows that overlooked what Spencer was sure was a sharp drop into the sunken back of the mountain.

A wrought-iron black gate crept open as Rossi pulled the car close and he flicked on the bright headlights. The eerie blue blanketed black shapes that became snow-caked bushes, short trees, and a circular driveway.

"We're here, buddy." Aaron said softly to Jack, unbuckling the boy's seatbelt and hoisting him into his arms. Jack mumbled something Spencer couldn't hear and made a half-hearted attempt to hang onto the collar of his father's jacket while keeping his eyes tightly shut. "Alright, we're getting you to bed."

Car doors slammed, voices muffled as the team greeted one another with surprise and relief that they had all made it safely through the storm. Boots crunched over snow, flattening fluffy banks and Penelope's laughter sounded in the distance.

Spencer stepped into the brisk darkness, the wind already on his neck as though someone was blowing through pursed lips. Above him, whirling drifts of white wind carried over his head, lifting his tousled hair into the air and threatening to bring his whole person with it.

'Spence." It was JJ, immediately beside him, smiling timidly while Will maneuvered their son out of his car seat behind her. "You're here. You came."

"Not under my own will," a small smile of his own tugged at the corners of his mouth and before he knew it, JJ had her arms around him. She drew him in tightly, as though she were scared he might flee back down the mountain.

Instead Spencer found himself overwhelmed by a sense of calmness. He didn't like his dream with Mark, or his dream with Aaron, frankly. But JJ's affection and familiar smell were something of a kryptonite for him. He could never stay mad at her, her intentions being too good, too pure to fault.

As the pair hugged, Spencer felt Morgan's hands clasp his shoulders and squeeze. The elder agent didn't look particularly animated but the genius could tell he was grateful that Spencer wasn't at home either loathing his team for luring him to Colorado, or packing his bags for the insane asylum while Mark waited outside with the engine running.

Rossi unlocked the imposing double doors, and disabled the alarm before beckoning the team inside and out of the looming blizzard that seemed ready to strike at any moment. Reid felt more pats, more squeezes on his arms and shoulders and Penelope stood on her tiptoes to give him a small kiss on the cheek.

Their boots beat snow from their treads on sisal rugs that covered a burnt orange flagstone entranceway. Beyond the hallway, Spencer could see three or four stairs that emptied into a sunken living room with floor to ceiling windows and suede couches that faced an imposing fireplace.

"Wow," Morgan whistled, his voice echoing under the high ceilings. He tipped his head to admire the artwork on the walls.

"This was very generous of you to invite us all here," Will smiled and shook Rossi's hand before adjusting Henry over his shoulder.

"Of course," Rossi nodded, "we're family and family should be together for Christmas."

"Christmas!" Jack, who had apparently woken up from the noise of the front door slamming, cheered from his father's arms. "Is Santa coming soon, Daddy?"

"Very soon, buddy. But not if we don't get you to bed soon."

"Speaking of bed," Emily interrupted from where she was brushing snowflakes off of her dark jacket, "where are we all going to sleep in this...castle?"

"Will, JJ, and Henry have the ground floor bedroom." Rossi directed the family through the living room where there was a hallway that led to a spacious bedroom and attached bathroom. "Emily and Penelope, do you mind sharing the second floor bedroom nearest the staircase?"

"Nope, not at all, as long as I can get Internet access, my crown prince." Garcia tucked her arm through Emily's and the two collected their suitcases to turn up the stairs.

"Third door on the right!" Rossi called after them. He turned back to where Aaron, Morgan and Spencer remained. "Morgan and Reid, if you follow them, there are two twin beds in the room three doors down. There's a bathroom too in there, which is attached to the bedroom Aaron and Jack will be staying in."

Spencer could only imagine colliding with his superior in the dark of dawn as they both made a beeline to brush their teeth before anyone else was awake. The thought wasn't particularly appealing but it was not as though there was some kind of open forum for protests.

"...Your bags?" Aaron's voice broke Spencer's thoughts.

"Sorry, what?" The younger agent realized they were alone all of a sudden in the hallway and he had been staring at the front door.

The Unit Chief frowned. "I asked if you would help me with the bags. Morgan took Jack upstairs to go put on his pajamas."

"Oh." Spencer paused, glancing at the staircase and then back at the man in front of him. "Sorry, uh, sure."

Silence folded around them as the pair retreated back out into the furious storm, heads ducked low and hands balled in jacket pockets. Aaron opened the trunk and pulled out their two suitcases and then a duffel bag belonging to Jack.

"Thanks," he murmured as Spencer took each bag from him, the sweeping of fingers against hands not lost on either of them.

Aaron shut the trunk and for a moment, it was just them, out in the storm, alone with their thoughts and the feelings they didn't want to feel. Spencer felt Aaron's eyes trace over the lines of his lips and his stomach turned at the contemplation of his dream. He wanted to tell the agent that he felt recklessly alone now, that his body contained his unsteady heart and something else, something he felt but could not describe. It was a something that shifted with flecks of thought, with urge and memory; salted with brightness, flickering with white and pale gold like stars or at least something that looked like stars because they were made from the same substance.

He hadn't really lost all interest and affection for Aaron but sometimes the sincere words Spencer had spoken to him seemed so far away, no longer theirs but the air's.

Aaron felt it too, the genius was sure of it. And when the elder agent stepped forward, Spencer didn't step back. They stood close, white huffs of breath mingling with one another as Aaron, very slowly, reached up and tucked a loose strand of his former lover's hair behind his ear. The touch was intentional, almost teasing, with slender fingers lingering on creamy skin.

For Spencer, life seemed to rush by at a speed that was at once impossible to catch and too cruel. Aaron's warm skin on his made it seem like the most intense moments between them happened to have occurred only yesterday and nothing had eased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and it's dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or just plain unresolved as it was for them.

The genius fought the urge to reach up and press Aaron's hand against his cheek, close his eyes, not care that it didn't seem real. Snow fell faster, and he wondered if sometimes it were possible for nature to know how humans felt. Sometimes it felt like the short bleak night in North Dakota had known that Spencer's heart had been breaking since he fell in love with Aaron. His rib cage began to ache deeply the way it came to when he was with his lover. His heart would beat the same desperate rhythm of _Love me, Love me, Love me_, just in the same way the snow now fell across Aaron's dark hair and nestled in the open collar of his jacket.

"We should go inside," the Unit Chief sighed, stoic, but his voice was gravelly.

"We should." Spencer felt the hand drop away, the touch only now a memory that didn't even seem real.

They collected the bags, weaving between boots strewn across the front hallway floor, and made their way upstairs in awkward silence, unsure of what to say to one another.

"I'll, uh, see you tomorrow then," Aaron stopped at his door, his eyes searching for something, anything, in Spencer's own eyes. His posture was formal, his tone cool and at complete odds to whatever had just transpired between them outside.

It was a familiar setting...one Spencer could immediately place as the man had behaved the same way after they had spent the night together for the first time in Aaron's hotel room. He called it the Hotchner mode.

"Good night, Spencer."

"Good night, Aaron," the younger agent replied. Both men paused, and then Spencer turned away to his own room.

That same something returned to his chest, fluttering, as he realized that maybe, just _maybe_, Aaron was really going to fight for him again.

And maybe this time he would fight too.

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**Please review and more soon I promise!**


	11. Only Miss The Sun When It Starts to Snow

**Thanks everyone for the amazing reviews on the last chapter! So glad you're enjoying the story :) This is a short little chapter and I hope you all like it! Promise that it will soon get a little saucier between Aaron & Spencer really, really soon!**

**Song: Call Me Maybe (cover) - Ben Howard.**

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Somehow, Aaron slept and dreamed throughout the night. When he eventually woke, the morning was still in its earliest strokes. Pulling back the curtain only the slightest, so as not to disturb his son, he saw billowing columns of white still falling onto grounds that were now rock candy. Orange streetlights were rims of orange and almost impossible to detect. It was an icy kingdom that shone and sparkled and deceived outsiders of its violent potential.

Clearly today was going to be a day spent largely inside and Aaron could already imagine Jack's protests of how his daddy was a scaredy cat and how _Spencer_ would _definitely_ come play with him outside.

The agent exhaled and closed his eyes. Last night had not seemed real. In hindsight, Aaron probably should not have initiated anything because everything remained too delicate between them and yet he regretted nothing. While it was true that their relationship was like spun sugar, held together only by the barest of bonds, the Unit Chief was determined to strengthen what little foundation they now had. Because what was held in those strands was years of deception and passion and confusion and guilt and secrets and timidity and, perhaps most of all, love. They were ensnared in each other and maybe, if they got lucky, a little ice and the slightest push of a snowstorm would be just what they needed.

Behind him, Jack moved to lie across the middle of the bed, a subsequent smile coming to rest on Aaron's handsome face. He bent down to kiss his son and then noiselessly turned to go downstairs where he could smell the beginnings of breakfast.

The flagstone tiles that paved the kitchen were cool on the Unit Chief's bare feet, the feeling of not having any cases or department meetings to attend utterly thrilling. He wound the corner, expecting to find Rossi manning the stove, but was surprised when he was met with the sight of a sleepy Spencer who had his arms folded across his chest. He was frowning down at the egg that sizzled on the pan in front of him.

Aaron paused for a moment and leaned against the wall, watching as his slender subordinate gave a large yawn. It was enough to make the Unit Chief think of the rasp in Spencer's voice that was typically present in the mornings, which made him think of sleep, and of Spencer sleeping, and then of the way the agent always used to nuzzle his nose into his lover's neck when they settled down for the night after a draining case. Aaron felt his stomach flutter and his dark brows drew together in a frown. Aaron Hotchner's stomach did _not_ flutter.

"You know you're terrible at hide and seek."

Aaron quirked an eyebrow at the sound of Spencer's voice and then stepped out from behind the wall. "I'm not terrible."

"But not awesome." The younger agent's tone was almost teasing as he slid the egg out of the pan and onto the plate with toast. He glanced up. "I thought you would have left with them. Coffee's on the counter."

"Where is everyone?" Aaron helped himself to a large mug and nodded wordlessly when Spencer held up another egg. He fought a smile working its way onto his face. Spencer still knew how the agent liked his breakfast.

"The went to town apparently." The genius shrugged in the direction of a note taped to the front of a cabinet. "To stock up on food and batteries before the storm trapped us for good. I thought you would have been up."

Aaron suddenly realized he wasn't wearing his watch and he put two more pieces of bread and a sesame bagel in the toaster, feeling the empty space on his wrist with his free hand.

"What time is it?"

"Almost eleven." The two men moved about the kitchen, each unconsciously avoiding coming into too much contact with the other. "And you're always up at six." The young agent shot the chief a shy grin. "Sometimes five."

Aaron grimaced. "Hey, sometimes I would sleep in." He watched Spencer move the egg around the pan.

"Hardly," Spencer shot him a pointed look though it was joking. "You would sleep until 7:30 on Sundays-"

"That's when the paper is delivered. Salt and pepper?"

"And it would still be there by eleven, I guarantee it. Good luck trying to find them in these cabinets."

"I'm sure they're here somewhere." Aaron opened a cabinet filled with dried pasta.

"Along with the Holy Grail and the Lindbergh baby. Our apartment building isn't exactly a Mecca for high crime opportunities, let alone small highway thefts."

The elder agent's heart sped up at the mention of _their_ apartment, how Spencer would always complain and whine about his partner's early morning energy. It was rare that Aaron would remain in bed with the genius to eat breakfast and relax. That was their Sunday, their special moment.

"I guess I was really tired then." Aaron paused as he took the plate of steaming eggs from his former lover. "I've had a lot on my mind."

Spencer's smile faded and he turned away to put the pan in the dishwasher. Aaron could see his shoulders tense up for a moment or two and then sink back down. "Yeah. Me too."

Stillness settled in the kitchen as Aaron watched the way his subordinate's shoulders gently raised and fell as the agent peered out into the storm that splashed the large kitchen window. After a beat, the elder man stepped forward.

"Listen, Spence. About last night-"

"Can we make pancakes?"

Both men sprang to opposite sides of the room as Jack came walking into the kitchen, despite not having anything to hide. The boy looked at the empty space between the two agents, clearly cognizant of the awkward silence, and it was the typical Hotchner _I'm not buying your bullshit _look that crossed over his face.

"Of course, Jackster." Spencer grinned instantly. "Uncle Dave may even have cookie cutters so we can make them into fun shapes."

"Awesome!" Jack high-fived Spencer's outstretched hand, shooting a toothy grin at his father. "Can we have chocolate chips too?"

"Chocolate chips _too_, huh?" Aaron bent down and began digging his fingers in his son's sides. Jack shrieked in delight, pushing against the Unit Chief's broad chest as he giggled and struggled to break free. "Chocolate chips are for wild little boys."

"And dinosaurs," Spencer smirked, remembering when Jack had insisted that the dinosaurs he was studying in school would have let him having chocolate sauce with his ice cream right before bed. It had been an interesting argument to referee.

"I'm a T-Rex, Spencer!" Jack roar's turned to a high-pitched yelp as his father grabbed him around the waist and lifted him into the air.

"Then I guess I'm a giganotosaurus!" The Hotchner men both roared at each other and Spencer chuckled at the similarities in the way they both scrunched their noses when they yelled. Honestly it wasn't challenging imagining Aaron as a dinosaur in a former life.

The elder agent took off into the adjoining dining room with his son still in his grasp, their roars echoing into the enormous house.

Spencer bit his lip, his heart warming. It was almost as if they were acting like the family they had been only a few months ago, the last time being when Jack caught the chickenpox from another kid who had decided to lick him while at the park. Both the agents had uncharacteristically stayed home from work and, in a fit of nostalgic play, had built a fort in the living room and brought out _Cars_, _Despicable Me_, the jars of Nutella, spoons, and Cap 'N' Crunch.

"Spencer, what dinosaur are you?" Jack howled from the dining room, making a beeline for the agent when he came back into view. His cheeks were flushed pink just the same way Aaron's were when the man appeared moments later, slightly out of breath.

Spencer knelt, smoothing the boy's hair away from his face. He held up the bag of chocolate chips he had located in the pantry. "A cocoasaurus."

"Awesome!"

The pair got to work on making the pancakes, with Spencer eating his own breakfast in between attempting to work the congealing chocolaty mix into actual dinosaur shapes. The dark-haired chief leaned against the countertop, eating his bagel while overseeing everything in amusement. The familiarity and warmth of the situation was touching to witness and it made his heart clench as he thought about how he had wrecked it all. In hindsight, the circumstances were sure to deliver a blow no matter how it was worked through - either Aaron lost his job by refusing to keep a fellow agent safe, or he ruined his relationship with a man he wanted so desperately to call his husband one day.

"Aaron?"

The Unit Chief looked up from where he had been staring at the cream cheese-smeared knife in his hand. Spencer held out a pancake to him in the shape of some kind of maverick dinosaur.

"Jack says it's a cocoasaurus."

"Then it must be good." Aaron arched a dark eyebrow at his subordinate and then glanced at his six-year-old and winked, taking the pancake.

"Spencer makes the best pancakes." Jack announced in between mouthfuls of fluffy batter.

"He does." Aaron exhaled slowly, meeting the other agent's hazel eyes. They were tinged with gold under the track lighting in the room and Aaron felt his stomach drop as he thought about Mark's similar stare.

The kitchen became quiet once more until Spencer excused himself to take a shower, leaving the Hotchner men at the table alone.

Aaron had just finished his bagel when Jack spoke.

"Daddy?"

"Yeah, buddy?"

"Is Spence coming home soon?

Aaron looked at the hopeful blue eyes in front of him, his chest tightening. "I really hope so, Jack."

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**What did you think? Please review!**


	12. Into The Blue

**Here it is! Finally! The next chapter of The Lightening Strike! I apologize for the seriously long break I took between chapters - school, life, the usual got in the way and all my inspiration had basically flown out of the window. But I really hope you enjoy this chapter :) there will be more to come soon as I am finally out of school!**

**Song: _The Longer I Run_ - Peter Bradley Adams/_Video Games_ - Lana Del Rey (love, love love! This was the entire inspiration for this chapter!) **

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The air was hushed as Spencer padded barefoot across the cool tile of the bathroom upstairs, discarding his pajama pants and shirt before reaching into the glass shower and turning the faucet to the hottest it would go. He paused as the thundering water broke the quiet and he let his eyes slowly shut, leaning against the wall. Meeting Aaron's dark, expectant eyes downstairs in the kitchen had given the young genius chills. And they were no longer the kind of chills that came from putting more thought into what Aaron had done to him. No, they were the kind of chills that usually sparked up whenever the men now found themselves alone together; the kind that Spencer battled with as they fought to make his feet walk the two paces to close the gap between he and Aaron, to close the space between their parted lips, and kiss the man in the blue dark of the very quiet house.

Spencer exhaled, opening his eyes and wondering how he had begun to ache for his lover the way he had done more than a year ago.

The agent shivered as he caught his reflection in the mirror over the sink. How different he appeared now than he had in North Dakota, when he had stood over very much a similar sink in a hotel room, staring into the eyes of a stranger who looked not unlike him. Trusting and warm hazel eyes were now a little cooler, and the hollows under his high cheekbones were now a little deeper. And though they were minor changes, Spencer suddenly realized that his whole person had changed. They were changes he could no longer pinpoint with accuracy. He was just different and the past was no longer something he could grasp at and mold and stop from happening.

As he stood in front of the mirror, he knew he could touch his fingers to each place Aaron had once kissed, for all of his body had been scorched at one point from the man's two lips and tongue. Every freckle, every line and every indentation had been touched, stroked and mapped out under a wanting mouth while rough hands held him, silently promising to never let him go. And now no combination of twenty-six letters in the alphabet could ever really capture even what a sliver of what Spencer was feeling.

The genius shook his head and stepped into the shower, welcoming the warm gushes of water that poured over his body. He didn't want to remember tears, fresh tracks down his face like roadmaps to heartache, atlases to longing. He wanted to forget the slow roll, the wet eyes glistening from tears unintended.

Thrusting a hand out of the open shower door, Spencer blindly flapped about for his iPhone on the bathroom counter and, without looking at it, navigated his long fingers to find the iPod app. "Carol of the Bells," by The Bird and the Bee filled the humid room and Spencer hummed the Christmas tune while he inhaled the thick steam and felt the water run over every stretch of bare skin. He could feel his shoulders lower but no matter how relaxed he became, but he could no longer ignore the hopeful look in Aaron's dark gaze that continued to appear in his mind. Both brown eyes were lit from within as the men stepped around each other in the kitchen, more comfortable than they had been with one another in weeks while Jack swirled around their legs. It was a look he missed and it was the same look he had breathed in late last night when the agents had plucked the suitcases out from the truck of the Unit Chief's car.

_Stop_, Spencer ordered himself. _Stop wanting him._

Shutting off the faucet with more force than was necessary, he stepped out and looked about for a towel on one of the railings.

There was none.

He sighed in annoyance and picked up his pajama pants to pat himself dry. After a while, however, they and Spencer were both still sopping wet. He looked around the empty bathroom and then pressed his ear to the door to try to see if the team had returned from their outing. He debated trying his luck and streaking down the hallway but was sure that with his luck, he'd run straight into JJ or Emily if they were back. Or worse, Jack.

That would make for a nice explanation as to why he and Aaron were no longer together.

"Aaron," Spencer finally called, shivering as the cold air began to settle around him and the steam escaped under the door.

He really did _not_ want to do this.

"Aaron! Aaron, I need you!" The genius yelled at the door. He waited a few moments but heard nothing. "Now, Aaron!"

Still nothing.

Opening the door a crack, Spencer began, for all intents and purposes, to basically chant his boss's name. After a minute or so, he had become so preoccupied with his own voice filling his ears that he missed the feet hurrying up the stairs at a frantic pace, their steady beat along the hallway and the door coming at his face.

_Whack_.

Spencer didn't know what hit him, literally. He spiraled back into the bathroom, blind and wondering if this was like getting shot in the face, as his dark haired chief charged through the open door with a look of terror in his eyes.

"What?!" Aaron cried. "Spencer!"

He took a step forward but had the misfortune of hitting the huge puddle of water Spencer had left while standing dripping at the door. The man felt his feet slip out from underneath him and he landed with a grunt as his back hit the unforgiving ground and his head landed on Spencer's chest.

He would have cursed and yelled but the air had been shoved from his lungs. The pain in his neck was obscene and Aaron could do little but groan as he rolled onto all fours and collapsed against the bathroom counter, breathing heavily.

"What the fuck, Spencer?" He croaked as he slid down next to the young agent who was sprawled on the tile on his side, his eyes squeezed shut as he held his shoulder with the hand that wasn't clutching his sleepwear. "_Spencer_, answer me. Are you hurt?"

"All I wanted was a towel," the genius hissed, glaring at Aaron and covering himself up with his clothes.

Aaron forced his body upright and knelt next to his teammate, his brows drawn together in a deep frown. He was hesitant to settle his hands on the naked skin in front of him.

"I'm sorry, I thought it was an emergency, Spence. You all but screeched my name like a banshee for ten minutes."

"_Forty seconds_, Aaron," Spencer countered, coughing as he sat up with Aaron's arms supporting him. He inhaled sharply, desperately trying to bring air back into his body and he didn't fight his boss's firm rubbing across his naked shoulder blades.

"Spencer you scared the living daylights right out of me," the chief said softly, cupping the genius's cheek in his palm. "Here. Let me look at you. Where does it hurt? What can I do?"

The younger agent coughed again, and after a beat he choked out, "how about never hit me with a door again?"

Aaron's frown flattened immediately and he scowled slightly. "I thought you had severely injured yourself. I didn't intentionally beat you with Rossi's door."

Spencer snorted surprisingly. "What? You thought I had fallen in the toilet?"

"It wouldn't have been the first time you had trouble in the bathroom," Aaron retorted evenly, but a hint of a smile tugged at his lips. "I'm glad to see you can at least laugh it off."

He crouched and rested a light hand on Spencer's shoulder. "Let me go get you a towel."

The agent disappeared and returned in an instant, a large fluffy white towel in his hands. Spencer stood awkwardly, appreciating the decency Aaron had to turn his head downward. The genius draped the towel around his shoulders and was grateful that it was large enough to cover everything.

Without thinking, Aaron glanced up and smiled at his former lover. He reached up, rubbing both his hands over Spencer's arms to bring warmth to the agent, and letting his eyes rest on Spencer's full lips, the lower of which had been drawn into his mouth to bite.

"Don't bite," Aaron murmured, pausing the rubbing and brushing the pad of his thumb across the slightly chapped lip.

Spencer froze under the gentle ministration, inhaling sharply, and both agents fell silent as their gazes caught. The younger agent was unable to look away and if he didn't know any better he might have thought that both men were standing in the same steam-filled bathroom as they had done a year ago. Spencer swallowed but refused to break Aaron's searching eyes. He felt warmed by the hot breath tickling his skin and was intently aware of Aaron's hand sliding up and around his neck, drawing him closer, drawing him in to the trim and inviting body across from him.

It was funny how everything could change in an instant. From hate to, well, not hate. From empty to full. From darkness to light. Or maybe Spencer just hadn't been paying attention to how a kiss could be both a question and an answer. That heaven could be the feeling or a person or this moment or something else entirely.

Aaron's firm lips pressed against Spencer's parted mouth and it was heady rush to feel it all again at once.

"I want to fix this, Spencer," Aaron murmured against Spencer's lips as he cupped the agent's face in both hands. The chief felt familiar, long fingered hands on his chest, one gently grasping at his threadbare T-shirt, while the other slid into his short, dark hair. There had been nights before when the only thing he remembered was the feeling of the Spencer's hands sliding through his hair while their lips collided together and broke in small pockets of hot breath.

"I know," the genius replied, surrendering to the ache in his chest and kissing Aaron in the blue dark of the very, very quiet house.

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**Ta-da! How did you all like that? Next chapter hopefully will be up by the end of the week! Please review! :) **


	13. Won't You Meet Me In The Morning?

**I really hope I'm not ruining it for anyone but CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE SEASON 8 FINALE YESTERDAY? Insanity. I chewed off my entire manicure, and now I am inevitably left with nubs for nails. Awesome. Anyway, after watching that, I couldn't wait to hop back into this story. Thank you to everyone who has been reading, following, favoriting and reviewing The Lightening Strike! I means so, so much to me and I am going to be updating a lot quicker now! So hopefully you'll enjoy this chapter :) and let me know what you think!**

**Song(s): _World Spins Madly On_/_Gotta Have You_ - both by The Weepies & _Ashes to Snow/As It Seems _- both by Lily Kershaw (as seen in the Season 7 and 8 finales - I think she's so awesome and I love how both of her songs have now ended the past two CM seasons!)**

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Of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting in solitude. Aaron had never been good at waiting, at patience of any kind. _Time_ didn't follow its own schedule so much as it followed the Unit Chief's schedule. And Aaron had been waiting for this moment for too long, when he would once again feel Spencer's lips press against his own. Inviting. Familiar. Comfortable. And now, _now_, he held the young agent in his arms, scarcely breathing for fear that he would break the moment or spook Spencer and they would both be nothing more than two men standing in a bathroom again.

The young agent's slender fingers gently pulled at his shirt, however, closing the space between them and Aaron stilled, wanting Spencer to take the lead. But as he felt the seam of his mouth opened once more, he released a heavy breath of relief through his nose. He buried his fingers in his subordinate's silky, wet hair, tugging slightly at the strands and coaxing Spencer impossibly closer.

The towel draped over the genius's shoulders was only held in place by the fact that there was no space for it to fall between the bodies pressed together. Aaron felt his clothes dampen with stray drops of water but took no notice of the cold patches on his skin. Instead, he deepened the kiss, drawing a moan from one of them, though neither could tell whom. Spencer made a little tone, like a doorbell, but didn't push away. Instead he yielded to Aaron's demanding mouth, soft and supple, as two known gun-calloused hands stroked the planes of his cheekbones. The chief had not shaved yet and Spencer relished the roughness of a day's growth on his skin.

Just as he felt Aaron's lips move to press small kisses to the spot under his ear, the sound of the front door slammed and both agents broke apart, panting slightly.

Aaron's eyes were heated, impossibly dark, as he stared back at his former lover and Spencer could have sworn he saw _something_, a spark of fear perhaps, appear in them before it vanished as quickly as it had come. The genius sighed and rested his forehead to his superior's, his eyes shut. Aaron's hands returned to the gentle rubbing up and down his arms and it didn't seem quite real, what they had done.

It felt so fantastically good, almost criminal to _feel_, period. The room hovered around them with great uneasiness, as if the walls and the shower were withholding their weight out of sympathy for the moment and the men's sudden breakthrough in self-control.

The dulled orchestra of voices filled the hallway, growing louder as the team roamed through the house probably in search of both the agents while Jack remained downstairs, oblivious.

"Hotch? Spence? We brought lunch back!" JJ called from the bottom of the staircase, her tone not ringing without a little curiosity in it.

"Yeah, grub's up. Do I have to wrestle you out of bed, Pretty Boy?" Morgan's faint roar joined in as the agent obviously moved past the stairs on his journey to the kitchen.

"I'll be down in a second," Spencer replied weakly, licking his dry bottom lip. He returned his gaze to his superior's, looking for clues as to what to do next, he didn't really know.

"That's our cue," Aaron murmured, a hint of a reluctant smile barely curving his mouth upward. His brow flattened as he assumed his roles of stoicism and indifference once more.

He touched his fingers to Spencer's shoulder. "How does your shoulder feel?"

"It will probably bruise," the young doctor drew his lips into his mouth and quirked his eyebrow up, searching his counterpart's face for any hints of repentance or culpability.

Or, if Spencer were lucky, one of those coveted Hotshot Hotchner smirks Aaron was known to part with on occasion.

"Well, let me know if you need it looked at," came Aaron's rather odd response, for it was said with little implication that _he_ would be the one inspecting Spencer's body. The genius straightened. He understood that they both needed time apart from one another, to register what had just occurred before going forth with anything more.

Spencer would seek solitude to contemplate his feelings, inevitably weighing pros and cons yet their kiss was looking a lot like a leading pro. And Aaron would do just the same, assuring himself control of the situation and then waiting for Spencer to proceed.

"I'll, um, see you downstairs then," Spencer replied quietly, drawing the corners of the towel close around his delicate frame.

He paused, as if waiting for something to happen again, and meeting Aaron's unreadable expression once more, he closed his eyes as he felt a featherweight kiss on the crown of his head and a tender squeeze to his hand.

"See you downstairs."

Aaron closed the bathroom door soundly, and Spencer sighed, tightening the towel around his slender frame. His fingers appeared to act on their own accord, rising to his jaw, and he ran his fingertips over his swollen, slightly pouted lips that were still parted in awe. He swallowed, running his tongue over his teeth where he swore he could still taste his superior's wanton mouth against his.

He smiled momentarily, before feeling his stomach drop. Kissing Aaron again was like picking at an open wound that hadn't healed all the way. For the young doctor, it had hurt to not be with his lover, but he didn't know if, on the other side, the pain would be any more eased. Would it feel better to leave the wound, perhaps let someone fill it up, with good and with bad, and get on that way? Or was it better to leave it open, maybe long enough to heal, maybe too long, picking at it now and then so it doesn't heal all the way and maybe never?

Spencer sunk his teeth into his bottom lip, unsure as to why he felt like he had just fallen from somewhere high up, only to break in half and leave only one person with the secret to the puzzle of putting him back together. And only with time would he know where he and Aaron were now spinning.

Of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing then the simple act of waiting in solitude.

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Aaron stroked a hand over his beard as he made his return to his guest room. Never one to hold a fondness for uncertainty, the Unit Chief felt as if he had just fallen head first into its grinning face. Never one known to be at a loss for words, Aaron also felt as though he might as well quit the Bureau and sign up for his first mime class.

He hadn't anticipated kissing Spencer. When he had burst through the bathroom door, he had prepared himself to face his subordinate hanging out of the window and clinging to his towel, providing a midmorning peep show to Vail's affluent patrons. He had been so wrong. And in a way, dealing with the aftermath of a kiss, the adrenaline rush of pressing his lips to a familiar mouth that was so easily pliable and inviting, was almost more difficult than having to rescue a copper-headed damsel in distress.

_What the hell, Aaron? _He thought to himself.

The agent gritted his teeth together, denying himself the urge to fly back into the bathroom and push Spencer against the door to hungrily welcome himself to those full lips again. Instead, he opened his closet door and stared at the clothes he had hung up the night before: three tailored shirts, two pairs of fine wool trousers, a pair of dark jeans, a heavy jacket for skiing and his lighter North Face, a navy cotton shirt he didn't remember packing, and three ties in various shades of red.

Disenchanted, he undressed swiftly and pulled on a faded, long-sleeved District of Columbia Fire Rescue T-shirt that, at some point, must have been blue but now had more of a grayish tint to it. He grabbed the jeans off their hanger, shoved both legs into their appropriate holes, and then closed the door to the bedroom. He winced as he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, all too aware that he had probably pulled a few muscles from falling in the bathroom.

As he reached the landing of the hallway, he realized that, like two mismatched bookends, Rossi and Penelope had installed themselves at the foot of the stairwell, both awaiting Spencer and Aaron's mutual descent from upstairs; the two dates for the two beautiful debutantes that weren't.

Aaron resisted sighing once more. With one last peek at the bathroom door where Spencer remained, he took his time on each step of the staircase. He schooled his face into the impassive mask he enjoyed employing so frequently at work. With each pace closer downstairs, he and Spencer's kiss played faster in his mind, like a film reel caught in suspension. He relayed the moment again and again, knowing that he would be thinking about kissing the agent later tonight, tomorrow and the days after that. He would think about kissing him slowly, tracing his fingers along his lips as their bodies unfolded together just the way they were before, and now kissing no one else but Spencer.

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